


Happy

by AddisonAddek



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Cocaine, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Drugged Sex, F/F, F/M, Heroin, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Medical School, Recreational Drug Use, References to Drugs, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:06:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 43,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27160189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AddisonAddek/pseuds/AddisonAddek
Summary: "My name is Addison Montgomery and I'm a drug addict." Addison's journey from one pill, one time to dependence to addiction and possibly recovery.AU. An Addison Short Story. Addek endgame.
Relationships: Addison Montgomery/Derek Shepherd, Addison Montgomery/Original Character, Meredith Grey/Addison Montgomery
Comments: 6
Kudos: 1





	1. Addy

_"Don't lose your life to drugs"_

* * *

"My name is Addison Montgomery and I'm a drug addict."

It's the first time she's addressed it out loud and — _my God_ , it's ... embarrassing. It's also the first time she's actually trying and genuinely wanting to get her life back from the dredges of hell. At least, she's finally owing up to her choices, mistakes, and decisions, she guesses, because really, it was all self-inflicted, self-made, self-initiated.

No one forced a needle on her, no one made her do anything that she did.

She wanted it. She even asked for it. She pursued it. She defended it. It was her happiness, her livelihood, after all, and she couldn't let anyone take that away from her.

She's very aware that she's made some ... humiliating, morally compromising choices over the past twenty five or so months, especially during the peek of her addiction.

She had put her loved ones, family and friends, through trials and tribulations, and even herself. She lied. She stole. She cheated. She really wasn't a good person when she was on drugs.

Drugs ruled her world; drugs were her lifeline, her entire existence and it was like a tumultuous, passionate love affair that she hated and loved all at once. A love-hate. But she loved it more than she loathed it, and she completely lost her sense of self beyond her addiction.

And she didn't care. Not one bit. She didn't care about anything but chasing her next high and she'd literally do anything to get her drugs. And she did.

Everything and anything.

_Indignity. Shame. Humiliation._

She just didn't care.

Though, she did, at first. But the longer she stayed in that lifestyle, the less she cared.

_I don't tell you how to live your life, so don't tell me how to live mine!_

_You don't like what you see, then, don't look!_

_I'm fine!_

She used to scream these lines on the top of her lungs all the time at family and friends, especially Derek. Thinking about it now, she really was pretty aggressive while under the influence.

She doesn't like who she was — the lack of shame, the lack of empathy and apathy. It's probably for the best that she can't remember half of the things she'd done in the name of **Snow White**.

She lifts her blue eyes towards the ceiling with a long and tired sigh — exasperated. It's always the same.

When she had still been in medical school — long before the addiction had taken hold of her life and she'd thrown it all away in favour of the next hit — she had a fiancé who loved very much. And through thick and thin, he never left, even when he really should run.

He stayed through the initial stages, when everything that came out of her mouth were ladened with lies. She don't tell lies, she regurgitated them and it felt like chocolate melting on the tip of her tongue. She lied all the time — nine out of ten words that she spilled were most likely a blatant lie, and she was phenomenal at it. Maybe even breathtakingly phenomenal.

 _Lying_.

There's this age-old question of how you'd know when a drug addict is lying; the answer — they're lips are moving.

She was doing so well until even she couldn't keep up with her own lies, until it became very exhausting to hide her tracks all the time. Not to mention, Derek grew very suspicious of her stories and behaviours and the 'friends' she kept 'meeting' at odd hours.

He stayed with her through the cheating as well, because he understood, from one of the many times she begged him to take her back, that it was the addiction and not really her. _(Though, really, that wasn't true because she was well aware of what she — Addison, and not the addict version of herself — was doing.)_ It had been a constant cycle of her leaving him for someone else, only to come crawling back to him again, looking for forgiveness.

She had lost her part-time job as a research assistant and didn't have any money since her bank account was frozen. And still is. _(She would've blown through her trust fund if her parents hadn't had revoked her access to the money.)_

Derek stayed through relapses and overdoses. And he didn't have to, just as he didn't have to when she was being unfaithful. He didn't have to stay when she overdosed the first time ... second ... fourth, fifth ... time and was hooked up to every machine there is and basically brought back to life.

He could have left. Like the guy she was sleeping with had every time — well, at the very least, he called for an ambulance before leaving her to die.

_What was she expecting, anyway?_

She would have fled the scene herself.

And Derek should have too.

He shouldn't have to deal with her and her nonsense, not with another addict, not after what he had to go through with Amy. And every time she'd wake up, he would be furious with her, in his silently stewing type of way _(and he says she's the passive aggressive one.)_ , but it had been a forgiveness always granted — a cycle repeated, _ad infinitum_.

She loves him and he loves her but he doesn't trust her anymore and she too doesn't trust herself.

Because she had found something much more interesting than love. Something much more loyal. Something that would never leave her — she'd have to leave it, and it was easier to leave Derek, but not vice versa.

It had started with prescription pills, but it hadn't taken long for her to dabble into heavier things. **Pearl** and **Aunti Emma** hits nearly all the same centres of the brain as happiness — as well as love, by consequence.

How terribly convenient for her.

"I'm three weeks sober. Twenty-two days."

Many heads nod back, as if offering some kind of vague approval, or some sort of understanding. Addison is having none of that either. Not only because she cares little-to-nothing of their opinions, but also because she is still very much in the midst of the hard-yards.

Whilst the first two weeks of withdrawal are always the worst, the next two aren't much better either. She'd read about it in textbooks, of course. But now that she's living through it firsthand, she's been made aware of how words often fail to do waking life justice.

Which, in turn, only leads to more nagging concerns about Addison's rather nasty, and much more secretive penchant for darkness. Its hunger is one that aches sharper than any other.

_Should she ever allow herself to succumb to darkness again, would she be able to return?_

"Hm?" Addison is suddenly brought back to attention when she's invited to sit back down by the group leader. Quietly, she lowers herself slowly and leans back, one long leg crossing over the other as she loops her entwined hands over her knees.

* * *

It all started with one tiny pearl of a pill.

One.

 _Truly_.

One pill. One time.

Then, it became two pills and another time — to be clear, it was two pills that were eight hours apart, so all in all, it was two separate occasions.

One day. Two pills. Two times.

And it was fine. She felt fine. She hit project deadline right on the dot and was content with the work she did.

_Could she have done better?_

Maybe. Maybe not.

But she scored higher grades when she was on **Addys** than when she was not. So, really, it was a no brainer to think that she ought to continue.

And as she stood there in front of the class, presenting her findings, everything was just so bubbly, bouncy and bright. Presenting the hemodynamic management during anaesthesia had never been so euphoric and she felt as though she was the most confident, smartest person in the entire room.

Everything was so pinpoint sharp and clear and by the end of the day, her jaws was so throbbing because of the constant grinding of her teeth and her mouth was still as dry as a desert no matter how much water she drank. Still, she had so much energy that she didn't know what to do with it but to spend most of the night and early morning on her knees, being fucked and contorted in all different positions. Then, when she woke up, she had the world's worst hangover.

_(Derek would tell her years later that she had been talking a mile a minute during the presentation but he didn't think anything of it because he thought that it was just nervous energy until it happened again and again and again and became a pattern.)_

After that, she went two months without any stimulants, but, of course, that attempt didn't last very long since she still hadn't finished her thesis and mid-terms were on its way and she was running out of time. It wasn't like the exams were going to wait for her, though it'd be nice if they had.

She've always been this way. Studying last minute, so that the information could stay fresh and retain in her memory until right before exams. Because if she studied five months in advance and take her time, she will have nothing in her head by the time exams started. And this way had never failed her, not in high school, not in college, and not last year. It was just her style of studying and she have always yielded great results.

But she wanted to do better. She knew she could do better.

_So why not take something so she could concentrate better and study for even longer?_

She still had an immense amount of chapters to shove into her brain and with mere five weeks, it would not be enough.

She didn't have any more pills and she didn't want to constantly buy off her friend of a friend since it was expensive, time consuming and even a tad bit embarrassing _(she have been going to him twice already, the last week)_ , so she decided to meet with a doctor for an evaluation to get a proper prescription.

_(Really, she should be ashamed of herself, but she isn't.)_

After probably one of the best bullshitting performance she'd ever put on, she was somewhat proud of herself — after the fifty minute session with her psychiatrist, he prescribed her 20mgs twice a day and everything started to look up for her.

It was incredible. It was a lot different from the other two times. Probably because now, it was four times what she had previously taken. But my goodness — she was so happy all the time. _Delighted_. And she loved it. _Ecstatic_. She loved being happy. _Jubilant_. She was bursting with joy from head to toe and just wanted to share her elation with the world.

Happy. Happy. Happy.

_Why hadn't she done this earlier?_

She had a system.

She would pop a **Addy** before getting out of bed and another one when she started to study. And sometimes, when she feels like she's running out of juice, she'd take another. Or two.

That's it.

One pill, each time, and it was going so well, so smoothly until it wasn't.

As quickly as this nasty habit started, it quickly got out of hand when she built up a tolerance. It was that quick — _yes_ — just a month of taking the stimulants every single day, which she wasn't taking as prescribed, and of course, didn't really have a need for, no disorder or conditions, she needed more to actually function.

Mid terms were due in a week and she was down to her last and only pill. She was shaking, she was irritated, she was having a really bad day and a migraine was starting to bloom and all she could hear and focus on were Derek and Mark's conversation and she couldn't handle them anymore and hence, she blew up on them.

"Would you two stop shouting!"

They turned to her simultaneously, their faces holding a confused and questioning look.

"Addison, we weren't shouting." Derek said cautiously, turning to look at her, then at Mark and then, back at her again.

She looked at them looking at her like she was crazy and she wanted to scream at them again, to tell them to stop looking at her like that, like it wasn't all in her head.

But they were shouting, she knew they were shouting.

Mark got up, gave Derek and her space to talk, for just the two of them but the way he was looking at her and the way he said her name — she'd tell him what she'd been taking, she'd tell him everything and he didn't even have to ask what was going on or what was wrong, and she just couldn't do that, not when she was so close to the finish line. So, she up and left.

She couldn't simply go to her doctor and just ask for a higher dose since he'd probably find out that she wasn't really ADHD.

Instead, she drove to New Jersey and met with her friend of a friend again and asked for something stronger. He told her of a **Pearl** crushed to dust, he even let her sample, and it enticed her and frightened her altogether.

Fear that she wouldn't be able to let go, not fear of the drug itself.

Shaking her head, she declined the offer, she just couldn't, and shouldn't start something so strong when mid-terms were a week away. He handed her an orange bottle filled to the top and asked for seven hundred dollars.

She took two everyday as prescribed but as exam days rolled in, she was popping them like mints. By the time mid-terms ended, she would not/could not sleep for the proceeding four days.

The first day and a half were downright interesting. Because she was more or less alright, though restless and so very hungry. She was always starving and her mouth was always so dry no matter how many litres of water she drank, and she found that her hunger could not be satiated, even when Derek fucked her six ways till Sunday.

..

When they fucked, up against his newly refurbished kitchen counter, after weeks of refraining due to mid-terms, Derek thought he'd have to gag her. He was actually looking forward to it — not the gagging, but the litany of 'fuck' and 'please' and straight-up moaning coming from her obscenely red lips.

"Shh, Mark can hear you."

"Let him."

She had her head thrown back and her legs locked around Derek's thighs, and her arms wrapped around him. One hand was cradling the nape of his neck, clutching him to her so that his nose could burrow into the dip of her collarbone. The other was gripping his shoulder, nails digging in deep with every well-timed thrust of his hips.

And with every cant of her hips, the way she twisted her fingers into his hair and pulled — and God if that didn't make him growl deep in his chest and just thrust harder — and the way she would let out these breathy little moans and cries, he understood.

When Derek pulled away, he closed his eyes and nosed at her for a moment, letting himself take over as he followed the line of Addison's jaw, lips, and eyelids. And finally, when he opened his eyes and met Addison' stupidly bright grin with one of his own, he realised something else; he was never going to need anyone else ever again.

...

She inhaled sharply, "Harder, harder, harder ..."

Her thighs were twitching again, she never got off from penetration alone but this was the hottest thing she had ever done. She whimpered when Derek went back to gripping her hips and began lifting his hips from the bed so he was fucking up into her. She was taken off guard when he grabbed her back and lifted her and flipped her over, pushing her knees to her chest and began pounding into her.

Her moan came out more like a pleasured scream and she scrambled for purchase but Derek held her down and fucked into her deeper than she had ever been penetrated before.

Then, there was this banging against the wall and she heard Mark's voice, "Hey! Would you two be more considerate! I'm trying to sleep!"

She didn't care and she kissed Derek as the obscene sound of flesh slapping echoed through the small bedroom. She wasn't used to such rough treatment, but she was loving it.

They both came, Derek following her almost immediately, with his face buried into her neck, and her nails digging gouges into his back.

"What's gotten into you?" Derek asked in the afterglow of it all, collapsing on the other side of her kissing her shoulder and rubbing her arm.

..

Good thing it was winter break.

Because if she wasn't in the bedroom, she was in the kitchen munching on every last food there was like a glutton.

Because the next two days were the scariest. They were a blur of pain, anxiety, heart palpitations and tears since she was just so frustrated that she still hadn't fallen asleep.

Just five minutes, she told herself. If she could just close her eyes and brain for five bloody minutes, she would be all better.

But she seemed to be permanently tired. She felt physically tired, even thought she had done zero to nothing to warrant feeling physically drained. She hadn't done anything but lie down for the past two days and still, she felt like she had been tackled and shoved around in a football field.

Her eyelids felt like they hung from about a third down of where they normally would and her body just wanted to shut her eyes and make her sleep but couldn't.

Derek didn't come over, or rather, she specifically told him not to. She didn't want him to accidentally stumble upon her things.

She would pace around her apartment during the dead hours of the morning, walking from the kitchen to the living room and then, to the balcony and back to her room.

Reading a book didn't help and it didn't help that she simply couldn't concentrate.

Also, she had a headache. Persistent and throbbing and blindingly painful. It didn't start out too terribly and she didn't care much about it at first. But it got progressively worse over a short amount of time. She took a Tylenol and thought she'd be alright.

It didn't do anything. Of course. And so she went straight into the bathroom for a scalding hot shower because that had always been her 'miracle cure' for headaches — a stupid hot water on her head till she didn't feel anything.

It did less to nothing to stop the pain.

Then, her eyes hurt and her head felt like it was going to explode. Her body felt like it had lead hanging off every limb. Everything felt heavy, everything was hard to do.

At that point, she hadn't slept in almost ninety hours and she was in a panic (mainly of people finding out), her head was pounding so bad and she couldn't keep anything down because of that, but she still went out with Derek and Mark for food, thinking that maybe if she walked around the busy city, she'd tire herself out.

It made sense at that night. Granted, she certainly wasn't thinking clearly.

Derek didn't know, so he couldn't have understood that it was the affects of what she had been taking. He didn't even know that she hadn't slept in four days. Throughout the night, he kept asking her to take a test, kept pestering her about her being cranky and irritated lately and — it's not that okay, just because I'm irritated doesn't mean I'm pregnant!

She was frustrated. She was crying. She didn't know what to do. She didn't want to hallucinate. Because that's what happens when you don't sleep a wink — you gradually lose your mind and she knew she starting to or already was and she was just so paranoid of anyone finding out.

"You sure do sound preggo." Mark retorted, snorting and she stepped forward with a hand in the air ready to smack him upside the head when Derek stopped her.

"Addison," he said softly, kissing the inside of her wrist, "Hey look. It's your favourite ice cream place. Let's go inside."

"Derek. I'm not a child. Don't speak to me like I'm a child." she crossed her arms around her chest when she noticed her hands were shaking, "I don't want ice cream. I just wanna go home."

Mark said something about their apartment being tainted because of her, "Derek. Make him stop." she cried, cradling her pounding head. "Please."

"Mark, just leave her alone." Derek said before turning back to her, a hand around her waist, " Let's go?"

She groaned and rubbed her face, nodding as they walked in.

And as they stood in line at an ice cream parlour, she caught a reflection of herself and she all but gasped. She didn't look like herself at all. That person was not her. She had a bit of weight, but not too drastic to warrant concern, her eyes were huge and she had dark circles around her eyes and her skin was pasty and waxy and grey.

"Red, you're sweating ..." she heard Mark said in wonder, truly taken aback.

"What? No — stop — don't touch me," she swatted his hand away when he swiped the tiny droplets across her forehead.

"It's the middle of winter."

She rolled her eyes at him and looked at Derek who stared at her silently for a moment.

"Sorry, I ... God, I feel fine. Okay."

No. She didn't. She felt like her heart was going to burst right out of her chest.

"Maybe I should take you home?" Derek asked, "You don't look good at all, Addie." he said, placing a hand on her shivering shoulder.

"No. No. Why? I'm fine. I just —" she winced then, as she spoke, squinting at Derek when he suddenly became blurry in her vision.

"Addie?"

"I think I'm gonna —"

Everything went black at that moment.

Derek would tell her later that she had tipped to the side, falling to the floor. And as she went down and because she was so long, her arm had knocked over something to the wooden floorboards, letting it all crash beside her.

A woman cried out when she started seizing on the ground below them, dropping her tray of frozen desserts at the frightful sight.

"Addison!" Derek had just missed catching her when her eyes rolled back, dropping to his knee as he grabbed her convulsing jaw to hold still.

"Call an ambulance, please!"

Mark snapped at the bunch of people who had crouched beside them in the gathering crowd like it was a show, worrying his eyes at Addison when foam began building and spilling from her lips, her blue eyes rolling back into her head as she choked and trembled.

* * *

Addison woke up in the hospital, cringing as her eyes adjusted to the brightness of the room.

"Addie, you're finally awake."

"Finally?" she croaked. She still felt so bad as though no time had passed. "What time is it?"

"Four-fifteen."

Four-fifteen?

But they were just at the ice cream place. It was around seven, she remembered looking at the clock there and it was dark outside.

Then, it hit her.

The light from outside.

Bright as day. Because it was ... you know, the middle of the day.

_Four-fifteen?_

Twenty one hours had passed. She had slept for almost a day and she didn't even felt like it. She didn't even think she lost consciousness because all of her thoughts were still in order.

She wanted to cry again because she had slept for twenty-one hours straight and nothing — she still felt the same.

"You had a seizure, Addie."

Only a mild seizure. Derek was being dramatic.

When the doctor came into her room to talk to her, she asked Derek if he'd mind stepping out. She didn't want him to know. She'll tell the doctors, of course, there was no point in lying to them that she hadn't been taking anything.

He looked hurt but stepped out anyway.

"So, I take it, your boyfriend doesn't know?"

She shook her head, not meeting the doctor's gaze.

 _No_.

The doctor paused and looked at her with half a smile, blinking back down to his clipboard with a sigh. "So, withdrawal is what almost killed you, Miss Montgomery."

She nodded, slowly. She figured as much.

"Have you also been drinking?"

She nodded again. "But not a lot. I just ... I just wanted to sleep."

_Desperately._

"How long had you not slept?" the doctor asked.

"I think like four days — almost five." The number sounds embarrassing to Addison and she clenched her jaw, so angry at herself for taking it this far.

"Fatigue? Confusion? Difficulty in concentrating? No desire to do anything? Decreased thought patterns? Hallucination?"

She nodded. "But I don't think I hallucinated."

"And now do you feel well rested?"

"No."

The doctor scribbled something down; Addison cringed.

"And do you have any medical conditions — ADHD? Narcolepsy?"

She shook her head.

"There are a number of treatment programmes for complex addiction. If you have a problem, Miss Montgomery, we can help you."

She snapped her eyes to the hovering man with a glare, "I don't have a problem. I stopped a few days ago."

"And that was what caused the withdrawals, that caused the seizure." the doctor said, seemingly noticed her discomfort and casted a smile in her direction; just barely, Addison glimpsed a flash of perfectly white teeth, "Don't worry, I am not going to force you into treatment this time, Miss Montgomery. You have to want that for yourself. But if you do come back, you will leave me no choice. I wouldn't want you to waste your life." he said.

"Are we clear?" he asked lightly.

She didn't answer. Addison had to fight back the sob building in her throat. What annoyed her was his definite stance that she will be back, like he was so sure that she was going to ruin her life.

"Do you think you have a problem, Miss Montgomery?"

"No, I do not think I have a problem. I stopped and I promise it will not happen again. I just got caught in wanting to do better."

She stopped taking the pills. Though cold turkey and stupid, she stopped taking them. It wasn't an issue quitting. It wasn't difficult.

She was fine.

And she already vowed to herself that she'd stop, _ad infinitum_.


	2. Pearl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Past: Addison has a hard time letting Addy go and so she tries something new.

_"Once hooked, you're on a leash. Don't try drugs"_

* * *

Christmas break of 1992 found Addison in a dingy alleyway in Secaucus, New Jersey.

She'd be back at school in three days, and she knew she had promised herself it would only be for the holidays, that she'd stop before school even came back, but it helped. She knew if anyone knew they'd be worried, they wouldn't like it, they'd try and stop her. _But hadn't everyone been telling her for years that she couldn’t always put the wants and feelings of others before her own?_

_Yes, that's true._

If they knew, if they really understood, they'd be _happy_ for her.

This was what she told herself as she bought enough to last her a school term and rotations from the same friend of a friend she had bought the Addys from. She didn't want to think too hard on how much she had to get from the ATM for it. But he was more than happy to have her as a customer.

* * *

Addison slowly swirled the brown-red liquid in the glass; the world slowing on its axis as she brought the glass to her lips.

The liquid burned in her throat as she swallowed and she found herself praying it would set fire to everything, if only for a moment. She would take relief wherever she could get it. When the glass was levelled again, she looked through the liquid. The world was rose-coloured and vaguely translucent and that simply would not do.

Addison did not wear rose-coloured glasses.

She was a realist. There was no escape from an often harsh world. She no longer told herself out of ignorance or fear that everything would be fine if she willed it so. Realism was the only reason she hadn't completely crumpled. Deep down, the pragmatist in her knew that pessimism was just as destructive as blind optimism. It was about balance; there was a time and a place for both. But life seemed so hopeless ever since she stopped the pills, her deep-sadness, loneliness felt so overwhelming that it was easier to sink rather than swim.

Because, in the end, nothing would change.

She needed more, needed something, so she could get out of this rut, and feel less itchy in her own skin and irritated of the fact that her best friend was thirty minutes late.

As she looked through her rose-coloured glass, she realised that it wasn't about optimism or pessimism. Perhaps it was just the act of grasping onto that last shred of integrity with both hands in hopes of fighting off the truth. Because the truth was nothing simple. She lifted the glass to her lips and drank the rest in one gulp. It burned, but she didn't wince. Instead, she relished in it and continued to hope that it would abolish her of all her sins.

"I'm so sorry I'm late — and you started without me," she heard her best friend's voice coming from behind her and turned, resisting the urge to roll her eyes.

"Savvy."

She stood up to give her a quick hug, stumbling on her feet a little. She was all long legs and in heels after all. And not drunk at all. She wasn't drunk like she would like to be. Being drunk made the world run in slow, suspended motion. Made her forget; not nearly as much as the **Pearl** she was craving, but it was a hell of a lot easier to go through her day with something in her than not, lately.

"Oh, honey," Savvy said, holding her by the elbows as she looked her up and down, "You look ... wow. You look great. What diet are you on?"

"Medical school. Stress. And anxiety." she said, jokingly, and they both burst out laughing.

As they both sat down on their seats, she was aware that she had lost a bit of weight. She had hardly eaten because she was hardly ever hungry. But she never thought it was something anyone would notice. No one had mentioned it until Savvy just did.

"I wish that's how it is for me. I've got a lot of those too, you know. Law school. Stress. Anxiety." Savvy joked and they both laughed again.

"Don't sell yourself short. You look amazing, Savvy, as always." Shaking her head, "I don't see what you see." Addison said and Savvy took that as her cue to practice pleading her case and being the lawyer that she wanted to become she stated her arguments as though she was in court.

Once Savvy was through, case rested, Addison, the whole time, tried to look engaged, tried to match the appropriate expression to what she was saying, as though she really cared and was actually listening, she gestured at her glass, "It's my first glass, Savvy." she playfully said, indicating that it was too early in the evening for her to do her whole lawyery stint.

"We've never gotten a chance to talk about thatnight."

Addison tensed at her seat. The seriousness in Savvy's voice caused her to lift her head and look at her. Savvy was never one to beat around the bushes. "Right. That night."

If they were going to talk about that night, then she'd definitely need something more potent in her. And soon. Because she could feel herself vibrating with the need for it already.

Addison hesitated, then sighed. "Yeah, umm, okay, sure. We'll talk but I, ahh, really need the bathroom first —"

She watched as her friend's face turned into a frown. "Oh. I'm so sorry. Have you been waiting because of me —" Savvy began apologising but Addison was quick to stop her, "No. No. It's alright. Really." she said with a reassuring smile.

"Alright. But so you want me to order for us first?"

"Please. I'm starving." she groaned in exaggeration. And just noticing how truly starving she was. She hadn't eaten all day and yesterday.

She only had a banana yesterday, she thought to herself.

"Salmon, right?"

Addison nodded, clutching her bag tightly to her as she went.

Once in the bathroom, she locked the stall behind her. She was crashing, though she had just taken a hit at her apartment right before coming here, she felt it, and the black hole that was her existence would swallow her whole if she didn't do something to stop it.

The baggie, still filled was right in her bag and she knew it would only take a little bump to get through this dinner. That was why she didn't stutter when she pulled it out, didn't doubt herself when she tapped out a little on the flat part of her hand between her thumb and forefinger, didn't flinch when she closed a nostril and used the other to snort the powder.

Addison swallowed the taste at the back of her throat. The feeling was so weird and yet the burn was a pleasant kick to her system, like she was snorting ground glass. It was all worth it when her mind finally calmed down. She pulled up and tilted her head back, licking off the rest of the powder, sniffling again and rubbing her nose.

 **Pearl** worked wonders on her busy mind. It gave her tunnel vision of sorts and it let her focus on just one thing, she saw clean straight lines, working as fast as her mind seemed to go, and she got things done. It was similar to Addy but so much more precise and pinpoint, instant and ingenious — it certainly made her feel that way.

"Shit," she cursed when she noticed the toilet paper dispenser empty, her nose was starting to run, and shook her head hard.

She blinked a few times, refusing to let her watering eyes turn into anything more.

She took one Addy to even out the high throughout the night.

Death didn't scare her. She had always had a feeling she was going to die young anyway.

* * *

She had managed to stave off the pills for a whole eleven months, maybe more, because — one; she had had a seizure, though mild, it had absolutely terrified her, two; the whole not sleeping thing for days and days on end was an absolute mindfuck, and three; she didn't like the feeling of being dependent on something and with her somewhat addictive personality, she knew she was already hanging on a thin line and was mere weeks away from spinning it out of control.

When she had gotten home from hospital, after multiple tests were done that showed no damage to her brain, she didn't want to — no, more like she couldn't get out of bed for almost a whole week. Physically, she couldn’t because her mind didn't want her to.

She would get really sick in the morning, sometimes all day, stomach cramping as she forced bile out of her throat. Then, she'd drink only water and sleep for the entire day, truly exhausted and drained.

"Addison," her eyes flew open at the touch against her skin, the depression of the mattress under Derek's weight as he sat near her head. "What's wrong? You've been like this since we got back. I'm really worried." he said, hands stroking through her hair.

Addison made a low, distressed noise.

"What is it, Addie? Are you in pain?"

And when she didn't answer him, he cupped her cheek and made her look at him. "Talk to me. Please. I wanna help you. What happened? What's wrong?"

There were tears in her eyes, and her voice was ragged from sobbing. "Nothing's wrong with me, Derek. Nothing happened to me ... I happened."

She was just really sad.

She swallowed hard, fighting the bile that had threatened to rise in her throat again, and took a quick sip of her drink to wash it down again. Everything tasted so foul these days. Ginger ale, fruits, soup — even simple bread.

She knew her friends were all concerned about her, especially when she refused to talk to them, refused to let them help her. _But how could she describe the blinding pain that lasted for hours and lingered for days? How could she tell them that she did this to herself? That the psychological turmoil was greater than any physical?_

They had enough to worry about already without her poor self adding to it.

Derek tried, though. He truly tried to help, cheer her up. But he couldn't since she wouldn't tell him what the problem was.

And when he moved to get out of her bed.

A feeling Addison didn't understand shot through her, all she knew was that she didn't want Derek to leave. The loss of those soothing arms from around her would be unbearable. "No. No, don't go … stay here with me … please," she added the last part hesitantly, the word unfamiliar on her lips.

She had been telling him to for days to leave her alone, to lock the door when he leaves every single night but tonight she wanted him to stay with her.

And maybe even, forever.

Because that was when she knew they'd be forever — well, she'd like them to be — and that she loved him. She couldn't see herself happy with anybody else.

Derek gave her a small tender smile and re-placed his arms around her, "If you want me to stay, I'll stay, don't worry." He gently smoothed the red locks of hair out of her face where they'd fallen, "Now, I think you should try to eat, you need to get your strength back."

“Later.”

“Promise?”

Addison nodded, and closing her eyes, she curled up against Derek's warm body, grateful for the strong arms tightening around her … for their comforting presence. Here she wasn't plagued by her dark, twisted and sad thoughts, here she was… safe. Safe in the arms of someone who loved her ... to be here just felt so right.

**X X X**

_Happy_.

Happiness was always a concept that baffled her. She couldn't understand how one could simply just choose to be happy. _Like it was an option?_ She have tried, to will herself to feel happiness — trust and believe.

And disappointingly, it is not a switch that she could just flick on and off.

Because they said that happiness is based on overcoming.

_Overcoming what?_

From almost failing, and then succeeding could be one. Beating death would be another.

_Indeed. Nothing’s better, if one had recently faced death and overcame it._

Recovering from an illness.

_I’m just so happy to be alive!_

School or work success.

She had a seizure and she did not dead, no damage done whatsoever. She was in one of the best medical schools in the world. She was going to be a doctor. She literally had everything — money, apartment, Derek, family and friends.

She overcame.

_So, why could she not be happy?_

The magnitude of the struggle, and the pain it caused, equates to the magnitude of the happiness once you overcome it.

For so long, she didn't know what happy felt like. To chase that high of happiness. Because she had severe emotional withdrawals from the Addys that didn't let up and for months. Some days were of course better than others, but it was always with a constant hum of depression. And some days, she couldn't even get out of bed — didn't have the desire, will and energy to do anything, let alone go to class.

Her grades began to suffer and she was still playing along with the fact that she was ADHD with her psychiatrist.

She couldn't just go to one appointment without being a total fraud.

But trouble all began again in fall, when she was starting her eight-week rotation on general surgery. It was the longest one yet and she literally had zero energy to do anything — she hardly ate and when she did, she'd binge; she stopped moisturising like she always did every night; she stopped going to get her nails manicured, she'd chew them off instead — all she was was dragging her limbs heavily across the hallways.

Never had she felt like this. She got quieter, more distant, less like herself. She didn't want to burden anyone with her issues, so she wouldn't go out with her friends. They already have their own shit to deal with. Sam and Naomi were once again in one of their infamous breaks. And it was honestly not as bad as it seemed. She was just a bit lost at the moment and needed to gain back control of her life.

On Thanksgiving, they went to her parents' — Derek and her and Mark since he had nowhere else to go — she almost, just almost started up with Addys again. It was just that stressful and baneful to be in that house. Because at that moment pros outweighed the cons — she didn't have to listen to Bizzy's criticism all night and if she did, it'd be with a hum of bubbly brightness.

_Happy._

Her mother kept making remarks on her weight gain, not only to her, but to everyone else, who didn't have any purpose in knowing that, in the party — somehow Bizzy would snake 'weight' into the conversation.

She was so humiliated and embarrassed, to say the least. And so, she drank and drank to dull Bizzy out and half a bottle of gin later, it worked; the more she drank, the more inebriated she became and the less she was aware of her mother's nagging voice.

She woke up in her own apartment the next morning — _how she got there?_ She assumed Derek took her home.

_Did she made a fool of herself?_

She could not remember. But Bizzy's words stuck with her and so, she stopped eating because obviously that was the only logical thing to do. Only eating every once in a while.

And still, she felt like half a person, half of who she was. She couldn't remember the person she used to be. She felt as if she hadn't taken the pills in the first place, she would not be feeling this way — like Addy had taken who she was.

And it was all on her, her fault. And that fact absolutely killed her.

Sometimes she would hide in the supply closet and cry. Her supervisor had caught her once, he thought it was due to the realities of being a doctor, so he gave her a talk about attachments and comforted her.

What he didn't know was that she was selfish and conceited, crying because she didn't know what she was doing with her life. She questioned her existence, her purpose, she hated herself, she wasn't doing well in school anymore; she just wasn't at all happy.

 _Happy_.

And she wanted to be in that place again.

The only thing that was grounding her was being able to see her ribs more clearly in the mirror with every passing week, as messed up as that sounds. It gave her a feeling of control, something that her life was lacking.

Everything was out of control.

**X X X**

The first time **Pearl** came up was during her third week of surgical rotation. The resident, whose name she could not remember, was teaching her about treatments for oesophageal bleeding. So she asked her, "How do you stop the bleeding?"

Without thinking too much, she instantly blurted out, "Inject **Pearl** into the vessel. It will constrict the vessel and prevent bleeding."

The surgical resident spurted coffee out of her nose and looked at her with utter confusion and disdain.

The things third-year medical students say.

She bet attendings had a lot of stories about the stupidest things they've heard from medical students and this had to be top three.

Because instead of saying cauterisation or epinephrine _(which are commonly-used medical treatments)_ , she jumped to an illegal drug — **Pearl, Snow White, Big C.** In her defence, Pearl really does cause vasoconstriction, so it could potentially work.

Well, she meant … If the hospital somehow ran out of bovies, epinephrine, pressors, and other ways to prevent shock.

But it was stupid. She felt so stupid and dumb. But the resident wasn't discouraging her efforts and she told her that it wasn't so far-fetched because they do inject Pearl. Very rarely, though. And it worked wonders for stopping the bleeding.

* * *

It was a couple of weeks after that strange encounter with **Pearl** that she had a go with it herself. It was a girls night out with Savvy and Naomi and they somehow, by no one's fault, got separated in the club.

She didn't actually feel like going out clubbing that night, she didn't feel like going out, period — it was cold, it was snowing — let alone to a cooped up box with writhing, sweaty bodies all compressed together, but Naomi and Savvy wanted to for some odd reason, so she sighed and went along.

By now, she had already gotten a little used to the reverberating bass of 'music', that made the floorboards rumble and vibrate and thump in her booming heart and the strobed neon, colours flashing hectic, along with the thick cloud of smoke that lingered around the ceiling and made it extremely difficult for her to look for her friends amongst the glistening, sweating swarm of bodies cloistering around her.

Every now and then, as she tried to make her way from one end of the dance floor to the other, she'd looked around, still no Naomi and Savvy but — there was a couch, a big plushy, velvety soft-looking couch, in the VIP section, beyond the serpentine, that she so desperately wanted to sit on, someone to her left was holding a blunt, a group of guys spreading a line on the table while a couple of people were eating each other's faces.

 _Mmhm_. She never really noticed all the drugs before. It was just out in the open for everyone to see. It wasn't a secret. Hush-hush, under the table transaction. _Had it always been like that? Mmhm._

Once she gained her bearings in a sea of jutting hipbones, she decided a drink was in order and maybe at the same time, it could help ease her nerves. The gin and tonic she had just had and the two shots before coming out here didn't do anything for her, because her tolerance was just so embarrassingly atrocious.

After slowly pushing her way to the bar, she plopped on one of the high stools and ordered herself a hard lemonade, this time. It was the only "fruity" drinks she could stomach, and so she sat and sipped, sat and sipped and waited for either Savyy or Naomi to find her.

It wasn't the first time they had gotten separated in a club.

She looked up once she heard footsteps and felt a looming shadow hovering behind her, a hand on the back of the stool next to her and there stood a hunk of guy and Addison thought she'd never seen anything so captivatingly ravishing before.

He was tall, handsome, immaculate — no, he looked like a Greek God, chiselled with dark hair that was finely slicked and had thick lashes, something out of a GQ magazine and she don't normally drool over guys like this but he was the kind of beauty that could make you go weak at the knees by just the way he looked at you. This guy would give Mark a run for his money. And it took everything in her to not look away and blush.

"Hi."

"Hey." she replied. She didn't normally reply to strangers hitting on her, especially ones in clubs, because she's not single and ready to mingle but — God, was he cute and she had always been weak for men like him.

"How's your night treating you so far?"

Shrugging, she made a noncommittal sound, suggesting that perhaps tonight wasn’t her night. "Not so great. Lost my friends," she said, counting her misfortunes on her fingers, "Almost broke my neck on these damn heels twice and my feet's absolutely killing."

"Well, for what's worth, I think they make your legs look —" he made a show of running his eyes over her body until the very tips of her boots, "stunning."

She should have really been offended but it didn't matter to her because his voice was so deep and captivating that she could feel it vibrating in her bones.

"So," her voice was an octave higher now than normal, "How's yours?"

He was hunched slightly over his draft beer that he was gripping with both hands and staring at her. Not staring in a creepy way, but in a way that it was obvious he shared the attraction. "Not to sound disgustingly cliché," he said before pausing to take a pull of his beer, "but a lot better now that there's some nice scenery." He winked and she almost fell out of her chair and onto the sticky hardwood floor.

She smiled, a blush beginning to slowly burn her cheeks. "Okay. But that was disgustingly cheesy," she chuckled, "but I'll take it."

"Mind if I sit down next to you, then? If it's the two of us, you don't need a reason to be alone." He gave her a reassuring and tender smile before sitting down next to her, not waiting for an answer.

"Yeah, that's fine."

He nods toward her drink. "Can I get you another?"

It took her a split second to make her decision, and she drained the last of her hard lemonade and set the empty glass on the lacquered counter with a clink. "Sure." she said, not enjoying the lingering tartiness of the drink on the tip of her tongue, "Gin and tonic this time, please."

Almost immediately, he flagged down the tender and told him of their orders.

"And put that," pointing at her now empty glass of hard lemonade, "on my tab, won't you?"

"You don't have to do that," she shook her head.

"I don't have to," he said softly, "I want to." he told her, and the bartender nodded at both of them.

Okay.

"So, do I get a name?"

"You gonna tell me yours first?" she raised a brow.

"I asked you first."

"Touché." she said, smiling, "I'm _Adrianne_." she raised her hand to shake his, which he accepted without hesitation. The feel of his hand and palm and fingers against hers sent her brain to a very sinful place.

"Nice to meet you, Adrianne. I'm Dean." he smiled back, all teeth and he looked so breathtaking, squeezing her hand a tiny bit tighter in response before letting go to clutch at his beer once more but not taking his eyes off of her.

It's not entirely a lie. Her name is Adrianne — Addison Adrianne. It's on her birth certificate.

The bartender returned with their drinks. "Cheers," she said then, lifting her tumbler. "To a good night." Dean clinked the lip of his bottle against it and tipped back to drink.

And she slipped into it like an old glove, the easy patter of conversation, the mingling as though she was still single and available, the deft bob and weave of flirtation. It was an old game, one she had been playing since her college days, and one she knew well. She touched his arm lightly, threw her head back when she laughed and let herself smile when she saw the way he leaned into her. She could be someone else for a little while, someone who does this — who talks and smiles, flirts and laughs.

Dean answered and she let it wash over her.

Two gin and tonics and two shots later, she was starting to get buzzed and her brain was a little fuzzy around the edges.

"So, I don't see a ring." he states, taking her left hand in his, caressing, "Not married?"

Narrowing her eyes, "How very perceptive of you." she said.

"No boyfriend?"

She hesitated to answer but she shook her head in response anyway.

"I don't believe that. You’re funny, beautiful. I just don’t believe a guy has not swept you off your feet yet."

She shrugged.

"What, are they all idiots?”

“You’re a guy; you tell me.”

“I'd say they're all fools. But today's your lucky day."

"And why is that? You're gonna sweep me off my feet?" she scoffed.

He lowered his voice and leaned closer. "Only if you want me to."

Her heart began to race, of how real this had suddenly become. Was she really doing this? Was she drunk enough to be doing this?

She smirked, letting her last layer of guard and reservation down and all thoughts of said boyfriend. "Well, then," she said softly, placing her hand on his knee, "I guess I made the right choice of coming here tonight," she licked her lips, eyes darting from his evergreen eyes to his lips and back. "Lucky me."

"So, Adrianne, do you want my help and we can look for your friends?" he asked, glancing down at her hand on his knee and smirked before leaning in to talk softly in her ear. "Or you wanna ditch them and get outta here ..." he placed his hand on her knee now and squeezed gently, moving slowly upward and closer to the side hem of her leather pants, "with me?"

She stopped to think. "Where to?" she sighed.

"Anywhere you want."

She made a show of making a decision. "Okay." she said, "But I wanna have some fun.”

“Sure. But it might get loud and sweaty.” Dean said suggestively.

“I want what you were having first."

He was one of those guys at the VIP section snorting lines.

She was never this forward but something about this man had her tossing all her morals out the window. She had a feeling that this was the one and only night he would ever grace her presence and she wanted to make the absolute most of it.

"What I was having?" his brows knitted to the middle, sniffing and looking genuinely confused at what she had just suggested.

Then, she point to her nose, inhaling, and a slow smirk crept on his face when he finally understood. "Oh, I hit the jackpot with you, didn't I? I got exactly what you need." He leaned in to talk softly in her ear. "Finish your drink and then we'll go."

She froze again. She couldn’t believe that it worked. But she was both scared and excited at the same time.

"Drink," he implored.

She blindly reached for her drink and took one long pull, opening her eyes mid-sip to see him staring at her as she did so.

He took the tumbler from her once she was done and placed it back on the bar top, not taking his eyes off her for a second. He pulled his hand back from her thigh and broke away to get his wallet out again to dropped a hundred on the bar.

"Let's go," he grabbed her hand in his and he led her to where he wanted to take her.

  
**X X X**

They didn't drive out anywhere.

He had led her out the back and into the parking lot. She could see Naomi's blue Jeep Cherokee to her right as she contemplated her course of action. She could put an end to this, all of this, she could still stop this before it even started. She could tell him that she changed her mind and would like to look for her friends now, with or without his help. She could ... she could — because that was the right thing to do.

But sometimes, the right thing isn't always right.

She turned enough to look at Dean's hands on hers. Her hand looked unfamiliarly tiny in his and she didn't have tiny hands. They called her 'Monty-Flippers' all throughout high school for a reason. His grip, though, was lose enough for her to make a break for it but she didn't, didn't want to do that. She thought about it. She pictured and played her escape. But how can it be an escape when she was a willing participant? So she continued trailing next to him, allowed her legs to follow him to his car.

"Where are you parked?"

Dean bit his lip, smiling at her as he gestured with his thumb to the far edge of the level. Addison saw the black Eldorado in a corner spot behind a pillar, several spaces beyond Naomi's car.

They make it to his car without speaking any further, Addison trying to envision how this will play out, perhaps Dean doing the same too.

And she felt like a puppet when he jerked her forward, all wooden and taut strings. He crowed her against the car, fingers brushing along her cheek and it felt so surreal, taken aback, her back arching a little from the contact, and she vaguely noted Dean lifting his head to regard her as he traced her cheekbones. Each touch had her fisting his shirt, her body already on fire.

She licked her lips and meet Dean's eyes, which were dark and heavy as he gradually leaned closer. Lips touch and her fists moved up, grasping onto his shoulder blades as the slow kiss quickly became heated and fueled by their surplus of energy.

Kissing Dean felt like a whole new experience. Delighted and welcomed. His muscles flexing all over her as she chased his tongue around his mouth and clung to his shirt. She was very aware of his muscles, tensing over and over like he couldn't get a steady grip on anything, and it was disconcerting and thrilling at the same time.

"Your car," she managed to breathe out when they break away and Dean unlocks it, opening the passenger door for her to clamber in.

It was a really nice car. Definitely new since it still had that new car smell and feel.

Once comfortable, she rested her head back against the seat, wringing her hands together, a lit cigarette stuck to her slightly wet lips as she took a drag.

She was a little nervous, to say the least.

The radio was on but not very loud, the speaker thrummed against her bare calf as music played, and fingers of smoke slowly misted out of her nostrils when Dean finally glanced towards her, her lips trembling just enough for the ashes of the cigarette to fall and graze her dress.

"What's it like?" she found herself asking, because she was genuinely curious. She had only ever smoked pot two, three times and wasn't a fan. It had only made her sleepy and even ill sometimes.

"The opposite of drinking," Dean told her, looking more relaxed now that he too had taken a drag off her cigarette. "It's just ..." he started before pausing, looking somewhere behind her shoulder, "At first it's like a euphoric rush of focus, your teeth will be numb if it's good **Pearl** , then it's just a mellow focused high throughout — I don't know. You'd have to do it to really understand."

She nodded and drew from the cigarette again, trying to ignore how she could taste Dean on it, his saliva mixing with hers.

"It makes you feel like you can do anything. One of the greatest highs I've ever felt is on **Pearl**. It doesn't last very long though and you get crazy urges to just keep snorting it. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it — you feel absolutely shitty afterwards, the more you snorted the shittier you feel ... My uncle once told me that the only fun thing to do on **Pearl** is more **Pearl**. And boy was he right for once in his life." he chuckled and she did too.

It didn't faze her at all. The truth about **Pearl**. It wasn't much of a surprise — a drug of that calibre affects brain chemistry and circuitry and the central nervous system and therefore, would alter moods, emotions, behaviours and a person's perception — she'd be worried if it wouldn't make her feel 'shitty' afterwards.

She already felt, for lack of a better word, shittier than ever every single second of every day. She felt so shitty that that feeling was just a constant in her gut, surging and threatening to make her sick, like a quiver to an earthquake.

"What?" he chided.

Shaking her head and stubbing out the cigarette, "Nothing." she said.

"Are you sure you wanna do this? You don't have to if you don't want to," he shook his head.

"I want to."

He nodded, almost excitedly, "Okay, then," he sighed, reaching over to the glove compartment and pulling it open, rustling inside it. "God, I haven't had a rail in way too long," he chuckled, and she thought to herself that she had just seen him snorting a line at the club, pulling up a plastic bag of nearly crystalline whitish powder, a razor, and a sawed off straw.

Addison's heart really started to pound in her chest at the sight of it. She couldn't help but notice how she had smiled and chewed on her bottom lip, not sweating from fear or nervousness anymore, but anticipation.

Dean settled back, pulling a joint out of his jeans pocket and handing it to her. "Since it's your first time with blow, some weed should mellow you out and you won't get too worked up."

She nodded, immediately sparking her lighter again and pulling a deep toke into her lungs, even though she didn't really like it. It usually made her sleepy, and she supposed sleepiness is kind of a calm.

"How do you take it?" she questioned as she let the smoke creep out from between her lips, curiously watching him carefully pour the contents of the bag onto a mirror, cutting the powder carefully into thin, long lines. "Well, I usually toot it."

She giggled. "Toot?"

"It means snort," he chortled back.

She had never snorted anything before.

She did drank a whole bottle of Robitussin on a dare one time with her friends in high school and puked all over herself. So far, she had only ingested drugs, **Addys** and cough medicine, and the thought of snorting made her nervous. Just accidentally snorting water when she went swimming was enough to hurt like a son of a bitch.

"I even got you your own straw."

"We just met thirty seconds ago." she retorted.

"Well, it's yours now." he said, flashing a smile at her.

Rolling her eyes playfully, she accepted the straw and took a deep breath as she watched him cut and scraped it finer.

"What else you do with it?" she stammered.

Noticing her change of tune, he grasped her hand. "People inject. Rub it in their mouths, too. It's bitter as fuck but you learn to love it. You don't have to snort it, it kind of hurts, actually …" he answered, but then got a soft and mischievous smile as he added, "... but I like it. Sort of a burning and numbing feeling, and I get this coppery tasting drip in my throat. God, I can't help but like it."

She was wondering if she could convince and bring herself to snort it when Dean's voice broke through her concentration. "Virgins first."

And with that, he picked up the razor, dusted with the gritty whiteness. "Open up," he purred.

She was deathly nervous when she saw the razor, but for some reason — thanks to the pot and alcohol for making her fearless and wilfully stupid tonight, she just knew that he would not hurt her.

After exhaling her last drag and flipping the spent end of her joint out the window, somewhere in the dark parking lot, she opened my mouth coyly. Dean held her jaw tenderly with one hand as he wiped his razor gingerly onto her tongue. She crinkled her nose at the metallic taste, quickly darting her tongue back in place of her mouth, pressing the stinging against the back of her teeth as an attempt to relieve it. Dean chuckled at her silly face and kissed her jaw. "I know. It kinda tastes nasty. But you'll feel so good in a minute."

After a minute, she started to feel a slight pleasurable high. Something similar to Addys but only if she had taken a pill three hours ago. She was still lucid, but she felt somewhat giddy, overexcited just a touch.

Dean picked up his straw, he leaned back overtop of the mirror, sticking the straw into one nostril while holding the other nostril shut with a finger, he began to inhale, and she watched in a weird sort of fascination, amazement as the granulated dust disappeared into the straw. And she asked herself if she was dreaming.

There was something about the aesthetics that rankled — and fuck if that didn't get her hot.

When the line was sucked up into his nose, he straightened up, coughing and pinching his nose. "Ohh fuck, there it is," he panted, shuddering with pleasure. She couldn't help but get turned on, a giggle erupting from behind her hand that was covering her trembling lips.

"Feels good?" she mewled at him.

He responded with a soft grunt, pulling at his jeans before leaning over and snorting another bump, this time into the other nostril. He shot straight up, mouth slightly open as he breathed heavily, not bothering to hide his erection this time. She was completely astonished; she didn't know a person could get hard so quickly off of Pearl. He swiped his shaking fingers in the remnants of the powder off the mirror, slowly cleaning his powdery hand with his tongue, staring intently at her with dilated pupils, his sclera reddened.

"I wanna ... also." she said, holding up her straw. Fully convinced now.

"A toot?"

"A toot." she confirmed with a nod.

He leaned against her, and she took a whiff of his cologne, to again dig into the glove compartment, before going on to prepare the powder again.

All for her, this time.

It wasn't a lot of product. But maybe too much for a newbie like herself.

Dean gave her a look from under his lashes, lips pouting a little. "This is my last, so."

"Oh, yeah," she said, realising how flirtatious she sounded only after she'd said those two words. She skated her hand over his chest, feeling both hair and muscle. "I'm sure I can find a way to repay you." She stroked Dean's arm suggestively, sliding her hand down his flank, along his hip and without hesitation she gripped him through his pants.

He grunted softly and she could see him physically restraining himself from jumping her bones.

Without breaking eye contact, "God," he breathed, inching his body closer to hers, moaning, "You really are magnificent." he whispered into her ear.

Then, taking a deep breath and squeezing his eyes shut to offset the surges consuming him, he straightened up and finally had the strength to remove her hand from his crotch.

"Finish it," Dean said pointedly, nudging the powdered mirror at her, "I'm not gonna be like this by myself."

It will just be one time. She won't get addicted with one time.

So, she pulled herself up before leaning down to hold the straw to the end of the line. She could feel his eyes burning holes in her and the next thing she knew, a smooth sensation shot right up her nose, like she was inhaling silk.

Dean had already warned her and said that it'd hurt but she didn't think it'd hurt this bad. Her eyes watered terribly and her sinuses flared, but she held the straw steady until she completed the line, grabbing onto whatever she could for balance as she scrunched her eyes shut.

Pinching her nose, the world went dizzy, spinning all around her and she had this urge throw up, but something steadied her. Or rather someone as arms wrapped themselves around her shoulders and she clutched onto them.

"Shit, Adrianne," he breathed into her hair. "I really didn't think you'd do it."

She couldn't get herself to speak. Too shocked, shaky, perplexed at what she had just done. She felt as though her blood was soaring through her veins faster than she could keep up. And her heart was sprinting right out of her chest. She could also see — yes, see, all her bad decisions melting away.

And this wasn't one of them.

Because she felt good. She felt more than good.

She felt great and she hadn’t felt great in a very long time.

Gravity had her falling right onto her back against the seat and staring up at the ceiling of Dean's car. He was right — this was the exact opposite of being drunk. Her mind was racing, thoughts that didn't even make any sense were flying behind her eyes one after the other, and while she felt like she could jump up and run all around New York City right now, she was equally as certain that moving wasn't on her body's list of things to do for awhile.

Maybe later.

"You okay?" Dean asked, sniffing a little as she registered him coming closer.

She was amazing.

Her brain was floating in a pool of warm water, all her problems now extinct.

Temporarily.

She nodded, or she thought she did, because she really was. Okay. The initial shock of it all had worn off and she was rather puzzled by the new feelings that consumed her, like a chill that couldn't stop.

Both psychostimulants, Addy and Pearl, they vary vastly. Given that, the effects of Pearl is instant, like a snap of a finger, and so much more potent of a high.

She could see Dean just fine and still had her own mind, which she couldn't say was true if she was drunk; it was just the whole concept of feeling that was different. Right now, everything was exciting.

"That was real hot, Adrianne," he breathed into her ear, "Very hot."

Maybe he was just really close and Pearl had made her sensitive to her environment.

"You are so beautiful."

Addison made a sound she had never heard before. And Dean's voice was so soft like velvet hugging all around her. So light and so far-away, miles away into the distance that she tried to catch it. His lips brushed along the cartilage of her ear, "Tell me what you want."

She felt so hot, as though she was burning in her own skin.

She groaned and his hand was back against her thigh like it was in the club, and she tilted her head back.

Pearl and now this, a hook up with a complete stranger, was probably the most reckless and stupid. thing she had ever done in her entire life.

She wanted to tell him to stop. It was all too much. But his hands — his hands were hovering over where she wanted them to be while his lilted whispers in her ear shot straight to her core, into her thigh muscles. He turned his face into hers and garters more of that warmth. There was a pulsating sensation inside her, that strobed a sear throughout her outer extremities.

And Addison couldn't wait any longer. She leaned forward quickly, pushed him back to his side, and in an instant was over the centre console until her mouth brushed against Dean's. Surprise crossed his face but he didn't stop her tongue from pushing in, didn't stop the hot little licks up the seam of his mouth. It was fast and needy. No time to think. That was what she needed.

When they broke apart, she crawled over the centre median to straddle Dean.

He groaned once, and loudly but he only stared at her with ink-black pupils, mouth parting for more kisses, like a hungry baby bird. He chuckled playfully against her lips and she pulled back briefly, he looked heavy-limbed and heavy-lidded and she knew her eyes looked equally glazed, like pools of tar. She could feel them burning red.

She wanted to dive in. She wanted to drown.

She leaned forward again, and he could feel her breath on his mouth. It fogged humid against his lips, at the place where they're almost but not quite touching. Addison splayed a hand across his throat, pressure like a warning, and distracting him so much so that his pants were open before he knew it.

Addison was a little apprehensive about just reaching into his pants, but Dean mouthing her jawline made it easier.

Now Dean's whimpers had turned to moans, leaving him marginally embarrassed because he usually don't make this much noise. Must be the high, or maybe it was just Adrianne, who was unapologetically jerking him like it was the means to her own release as well.

"Adrianne," he gasped, and he fell from her mouth to press wet lips to her neck. "That feels good."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Dean chanted, hips rocking into her fist like it's something else, and she was so turned on that she slid her other hand up into his hair and yanked him up for a kiss, searing and breathy.

"Oh, God," he said. He was so worked up and their kisses were more moans than anything else, each one building up to his orgasm that could only take him higher.

"I'm gonna —“ he hissed into her mouth, and the pulse surged through every nerve in his body, leaving him boneless and calm like the last of the electricity was leaving him.

His heartbeat slowed, his breathing evened, and Dean didn't feel like he was going to burst out of his own body anymore. "It's over?"

"For you, it is."

"Back seat?" he suggested.

In response, she reached up for his face and guided him back into her mouth. She kissed him lazily, halting all of his attempts to speed up, and she felt accomplished when the body beneath started to relax again.

"How about your place?"

**X X X**

When it was over, Addison lay there, feeling Dean's breath panting against her neck, matching the gasping heaves of her own chest. Dean rolled off her, flopping to the side with a long, satisfied sigh, and she rolled against him, pressing their bodies close while they both came down from the night's highs.

The Pearl was already or had started to wear off for her.

Addison had half-planned on getting up and leaving as soon as it was even remotely polite, but Dean wasn't making any "get the hell out" noises yet, and she found, after a few moments, that she was oddly reluctant to leave. It was kind of nice, actually, to just lie here for a while, warmly stuck together in the middle of the bed, sweat still trickling between them. They were lying close, but not holding, and Addison felt a vague twinge of disappointment, a niggling sense of incompleteness. Still, she made no move to put her arms around the man, contented herself instead with the hand that rested lightly on his flank.

After a few minutes, Dean stirred, turning his head to look across the bed, and Addison unconsciously followed his gaze. She wasn't sure why she was so shocked, but she couldn't help the sick, twisted clench in her guts when she saw what Dean was looking at, a photograph of him and a woman propped on the nightstand.

"You're married?" she was amazed that it came out so casual, and even so she wondered why the hell was she feeling hurt. Not like she deserved to, not like she was practicing fidelity herself, but still ...

Dean started, and turned back as if he wasn't even aware of what he'd been doing. "Not anymore," he said, and there was a familiar, quiet pain in the word, a pain that she recognised.

"How long you been divorced?" she asked, and Dean's eyes shot to her, the shock almost comic.

"Not divorced," he said presently. "Widower."

"Oh," she shook her head, embarrassed for assuming, "I'm so sorry," she offered quickly, like it was a snap reply, but glad she'd said it when she saw the understanding in Dean's face.

"Five years," he said, "I miss her like hell."

Addison had no idea what to say, so she nodded, the sound of her hair ruffling against the cotton of the pillowcase was the only other sound in the bedroom.

Neither of them said anything for a while, and she thought the conversation was over. She was kind of relieved. One thing to go home with a guy and have sex, another thing altogether to end up talking about his dead wife as pillow talk. But the thing that bothered her the most, she suspected, was how little it bothered her. And how much the words had struck a part of herself she wasn't sure she wanted to explore.

"So, did the drugs came as a coping ..." Addison trailed off, not sure why or what that hell was she asking — it was the Pearl running her mouth.

It took Dean a while to find the words to answer, and even then all he could manage was a short, soft, "Not really. No. You? What are you running away from?"

She scoffed. "Oh. Me? I'm not running away from anything." She wasn't running. What could she be running away from?

To her relief, though, Dean didn't pursue the question any further, turning the talk back to himself. "Stella and I were in an accident. Drunk driver," he said before adding, "He hit us square head on. We flipped. She died on impact. That was what the doctors said, she wasn't in pain or anything but I think they were just tryna sugarcoat it, you know."

She nodded, listening.

"I ... umm, had a ruptured spleen, broken clavicle, broken both arms, broken three fingers," he pulled up his right arm up to show her where his ulna had pierced through the skin. A compound fracture. "I completely shattered — I keep saying like I broke them myself," he laughed lightly to himself and she felt it vibrate through her, "Well, my C2 vertebrae was completely shattered. T12, L1 and L2 — it was a fracture ... something, umm — I can't remember what the doctor said —"

"A fracture-dislocation?" she offered.

"Exactly. What are you, a doctor or something?"

"I'm in medical school."

"Oh," genuine surprise was on his face, "That's ... interesting." he said, as he studied her for while. His brows were scrunched in the middle, and he opened his mouth seemingly about to say something but decided against it.

"Anyway, I should've died but, obviously, I didn't. I was in a wheelchair. They said I might never walk again but I beat all the odds, death as well, and here I am, walking." he said sarcastically, "I had nobody in Chicago to ... you know, to help me. So, I moved back here with my parents. I still have mornings where I wake up and I'd say good morning to Stella, then reality hits and I realise she won't answer ... that whole time heals all wounds is a load of crap because it hurts just as bad then as it does now." Dean said, his eyes lifted to hers. "I was in pain. I'm still in pain and the painkillers were all I had. What I've learned is if you cheat and take 'em a little closer together, you can avoid the pain completely, you know."

"I'm so sorry." she said again, dumbly, for what it's worth. She didn't know what else to say; she felt bad for him, he'd been through a lot, but pointing that out just seemed moot, to her. "Must be tough." she said, and watched as Dean's face twisted, his mouth curving in a mix of chagrin and self-mockery.

"Yeah," he confessed. "It was." He shook his head, his eyes growing distant. "Enough about me. You got any sad life stories?" His hand moved along her side, brushing with a gentle, sure touch along the length of her waist, cupping her ass in his hand.

Shaking her head, "Nothing happened to me," she said. "I happened."

For a long time, Addison could only stare, the warm palm cupped around her the least of the fractured thoughts spinning through her head. It was all she could do to keep her mouth shut, to not gape and stare and blurt out, "Ilied," in a heedless rush of self-realisation.

I do actually have a sad life story.

Dean moved his hand at last, curving his fingers instead over the outside of her thigh, his palm warm and dry on her cooling skin. Addison let it stay there as long as she needed to be polite, then leaned forward and kissed his shoulder.

"I probably should go soon," she said quietly, and he nodded, seeming unsurprised.

"Okay." he rolled over, away from her, and Addison got up, feeling suddenly awkward and vulnerable, wishing suddenly she could grab a blanket or a fig leaf or something as she walked naked across the room. Stupid. She'd spent the last two hours sweating up the sheets with this guy, and she picked now as the time to get shy.

"Use the shower if you want to," he told her back as she moved into the living room to fetch her clothes. "There's towels and stuff under the sink."

She paused, her dress in her hand. "Okay. Thanks." The last thing she wanted was to stick around a second more than she had to, but she had to admit that a shower was probably a good idea.

Still floating in the haze of intoxication, Addison couldn't help feeling sorry for herself. _Was she really that disgusting of a person? A girlfriend?_ She had stooped to cheating on Derek She was caught up in the moment. It just happened. _What was she going to do? Tell him?_ She couldn't even get herself fucked-up badly enough to the point where she could forget this encounter.

_What's wrong with her?_

She half-hoped Dean would join her, if for no other reason than to give her a distraction from her own unhinged thoughts, but she couldn't expect the man to save her twice in the same night. Especially now that the ugliest truth of all had finally risen to the surface, unhindered by school or rotations or pretended impatience or distance or any of the other thousand subconscious strategies she had used to keep the truth away for the past year. It was here now, right in front of her, and it was no use denying it anymore.

She liked — no, loved it. She loved the high of it, the chase, the calmness and happiness and that was the truth.

Because the second she felt Pearl travelling her system, a bulb lighted up in her head — uh-oh — and she knew it was going to be a problem for her for the rest of her existence. For as long as she lived, she'd be on her knees, at it's mercy.

She knew it. She knew it.

It wasn't like the pills. It was different, like she had found the missing piece to a puzzle that was her happiness. She remembered telling herself in that split second that she'd never get herself back from this again. She wasn't going to let go. And she probably wouldn't ever want to.

Addison finished the shower in record time, drying herself off with a careless disregard for the state of her hair, there was no point now, and yanking on her clothes hastily in the cramped confines of the bathroom. When she came out, Dean was still lying naked on the bed, propped on the pillows with his hands laced behind his head. Addison came into the doorway and leaned there, trying to recapture the easiness they'd had before, hoping that none of her inner turmoil was showing on her face.

"Guess I'd better be going," she said again.

"Okay." Dean smiled, but made no move to get up. "Nice meeting you."

She forced herself to smile back. "Yeah."

She turned to go, and was almost to the living room when Dean spoke behind her. "Hey, Adrianne."

"Yeah?" she turned back.

His smile twitched into a sudden, warm grin. "Take it easy."

She found herself grinning back, understanding him. "Yeah. You, too."

"Am I going to see you again?"

She paused and thought about it. "I don't know. Maybe not." She gave a truthful answer. She was never one to tell a guy she was going to call them and not call them in the end. "It's better that way, I think."

"Okay. Goodnight, then."

"Goodnight."

She left, closing the front door carefully behind her. She ran down the stairs and out of the building. She stepped out into the cool night air, and the breeze was surprisingly refreshing on her face.

She felt awake now. She felt alive.

Finally.


	3. Diamonds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Past: Addison has a chance encounter with a certain Greek God and is asked a question.

_"Will they turn you on or will they turn on you?"_

* * *

The next time she saw him was a couple of months after their encounter and of course, she had to be with Derek celebrating their third year anniversary when it happened.

It was on a Friday night at a ridiculously expensive French restaurant, the kind with dress code, live music, fine dining, and well-dressed waiters and it was a restaurant in Midtown so it would always fully booked. She knew Derek had to make the reservation months and months prior and she had just spent the entire ride worrying about how he was even going to pay for the evening. It wasn't like he was swimming in cash, and she didn’t want him to be in debt over an anniversary, but he said not to worry and so, she tried not to and do just that.

Not worry.

But maybe she wasn't just worrying about that; she was itchy in her own skin, feeling as though she was in the verge of combusting. She smiled through the incessant screaming in her head, anyway.

_More. More. More. More._

As they were greeted and ushered to their table by the maître d', she took Derek's hand in hers, squeezing it a little, excitedly, "This place is amazing, Derek. Thank you."

"Anything for you, Addie." Derek whispered before placing a peck to her cheek.

A tea light candle sat in a brandy glass between them, casting a golden light in them. They hadn’t had much time to spend together since third year had started. Their schedules clashed and they hadn't even shared so much as a breath together, let alone talk. When she was on day call, he'd have the nights, and vice versa.

"And you're paying for this?" she asked in a hushed tone, dragging her fingers along the menu. She'd been here before with Bizzy but taking a look at the prices with people that weren't 'like her' sometimes put her wealth into perspective.

_A twenty-seven dollar dish the size of her palm?_

"That is correct," he told her sweetly, "I didn't not rob a bank, Addie. Don't worry. Trust me. I got this. Alright?"

"Okay," she replied, "I'm sorry if I ..."

"No. No. I get it." he rested a hand on top of hers, reassuringly, and laughed to himself.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"What is it?" she pushed, her voice almost a whine.

"You're cute when you worry."

Sneering, "I don't do cute." she informed him cheerfully, “So, how's psychiatry treating you?" she asked Derek in a way to change subject, and his brows furrowed.

"Yeah, I thought I would enjoy psychiatry since they’re, well, slightly on the same realm — the human brain is largely unexplored after all — but it's vastly different. I liked it. Just a bit too Freudian for me." Derek answered, turning to smile at the woman who filled their glass with water, "What about you? Nothing can be as exciting as psychiatry."

Addison huffed a chuckle at his sarcasm. They were always poking fun at psychiatry but she found the human mind intriguing — mental illness, chemical imbalances, addiction. It held no limits, unlike the human body.

"Well," she said, looking up from the menu and draining every last drop of sparkling water in her glass. She felt like she was burning up in her own skin, mouth so dry that her tongue was sticking to the roof. "I don’t know — I'm afraid — I'm not satisfied with general surgery — I don't know. Isn't for me, either, I guess. Let’s see next month; I’ve my mind set on OB for a while now — What’s yours next? Pathology?”

“Yeah. It is. Did you know Mark —“

“Hold that thought.” she interrupted him as she just couldn't take it anymore. “I’m sorry but I really gotta hit the little ladies room. I'll be right back."

"Yeah, sure."

She had barely taken a step away from the table before their waiter arrived at their side.

"Good evening. My name is Julius and I'll be your server tonight."

Mmhmm. That smooth as ice, melts like butter deep whisper of a voice rang familiar in her ears, one that went straight south. But hard as she tried, she just couldn't place where she had heard that voice before.

It was in place that was loud. Vibratingly loud. And there were bright flashing lights. Then, she heard that voice in a car — she remembered that voice telling her that it was a Eldorado. And then, she was in a bed that wasn’t hers, in an apartment that wasn't hers and they talked about a ... _Stella?_

No, she told herself firmly. This could not be happening.

Addison blinked against the onset of recognition, against the dread filling her up.

"Are you not satisfied with your table, Madame?"

When he called her madame and she turned towards the waiter, it hit her like a slap on the face.

_Fucking fuck. You’ve got to be kidding me._

Containing the urge to panic or blush or both, a cold shiver ran down her spine and she felt dizzy with anxiety. She tried to act normal, engage in eye contact as though she was talking to a complete stranger, a waiter, whom she had not had a one night stand.

Maybe he didn’t remember her.

He gave her a quick once-over and something suddenly seemed to click into place in his eyes.

_I know you._

_Oh, shit._

"Adrianne?"

_Oh, double shit._

An awkward minute passed wherein Addison had absolutely no idea what was happening or how and what she would proceed with next because it had been a moment, a second too long for two complete strangers, who had never seen each other before to be silently staring, never tearing their eyes away from each other.

Now, under better lighting, the man had the most sharp, elegant cheekbones and jawline she had ever seen and combined with his dark curls, green eyes, and olive skin, he was everything and more she envisioned a Greek God to be. It was he from two months ago who had made her moan like no one ever could, who gave her an encore of orgasms — and perhaps, Diamonds was the added bonus. Either way it was by far the best sex she’d ever had.

"Dea —" and just as she was about to call him by the name she knew him by, she remembered that he had just introduced himself as something else, "Julius."

"You're here?" the man asked, still smiling with those dimples, excitement brightening his eyes.

"Yeah, well —"

"You two know each other?" Derek interrupted them, clearing his throat. She stammered as she was pulled away from Dean’s gaze.

Derek looked genuinely bewildered between them and Dean turned to look at her, smirking, awaiting and very much now amused by how she was going to spin the truth.

"Umm, yeah — yes, we do know each other," she tried to sound levelled and not out of breath with adrenaline and anxiety before continuing, "Derek, this is Julius. We know each other from high school," she emphasised on ‘high school’ when she looked at Dean in the eyes, "And Julius, this is Derek, my boyfriend."

"Boyfriend, huh?" he asked, turning back to her and raising an eyebrow.

She narrowed her eyes at him.

_Just go with it._

"Yeah, this one and I go way back." he started, standing close to her, skin-to-skin crawling in goosebumps, before snaking an arm around her and pulling her into a side hug. "AP Biology. She was the only girl who hadn't already ran out when Mr. White told us that we were gonna cut up some frogs." he laughed, "Do you remember that?"

"Yeah, I do.” she laughed uncomfortably as she looked to Derek, seeing if he was convinced.

His face pulled into a smile. "That's my Addison. You should see her with a cadaver." Derek said, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. She noticed that when he did so Dean glanced down at their joined hands, his face twitched, jaw clenched tight, tiny micro-expression competing to conquer the serene palette she could not tear her eyes from.

The tension was so thick she could it with a knife. She felt so awkwardly caught in between the two man. _Literally_. One was holding her hand, the other still had an arm snaked around her shoulder; she felt Dean’s body tense next to her own.

She pulled away from him, smoothing down her dress so she didn’t have to look at both men.

_God! What have she done?_

"So, what's the special occasion?" Dean didn't quite look at Derek or her as he asked it.

"It's our anniversary. Three years." Derek answered.

"Three years?" Dean said behind a smile — a smile too wide and too bright for his tone, "Tell you what, Derek ... Addison. Dessert is on us."

* * *

The second she turned the faucet on, hands shaking from adrenaline and fear, looking at the reflection of a monster staring back at her, she took deep breaths, asking herself what had she done, and that was when the door bursted open — loud and wide and she shrieked, jumping back.

"Dean."

_Julius?_

She wasn’t sure what she should call him anymore.

Dean crossed the space between them, movements slow and deliberate, all careful, precarious control, and she eyed his every step as if he was an apex predator, a t-Rex and if she could just stay very still, she wouldn’t be spotted. Then suddenly she was pressed into the edge of the sink, his hands were settling on the marble behind her, rendering her no escape, only forcing their bodies flush from groin to lips — but not kissing, just breathing her in.

She felt lightheaded again. _Dizzy_. Addison brought her hand to Dean’s chest as an anchor, but when his hand closed over it with his own, pressing it to his chest so hard she could feel his heart beating, the opposite effect was bestowed upon her senses now, and she felt like she was floating in the air above the exchange.

"You hurt me, Adrianne." He brushed his hand across the top of hers, then lightly trailed his knuckles up her arm. He took his time, never breaking contact, as he moved from her shoulder to her collar bone, brushed her hair away from her neck, and eventually let his thumb trace the base of her jaw.

Addison froze the second he touched her, and stayed stone still as his fingers glide across her skin. When he was close enough that she felt his breath on her face, she dragged her eyes to meet his.

"Dean." She meant his name as a deterrent, but it came out as a small, shaky plea. "We ca —"

He covered her mouth with his, not letting her finish, smothering her protests and kissing her with such fervency that pulled a groan from her chest instead. She was kissing him back immediately, sinking into it, her hand snaking around the nape of his neck. It was like a fan had turned on in her brain, scattering all rational thoughts of said boyfriend waiting for her outside, and it took some time before they settle.

He bit her bottom lip lightly, once, then deepened the kiss, fisting a handful of fabric from the side of her dress and pressed their bodies closer.

Like merciful, frustrating clockwork, her brain clicked back on, and she curled her lips inward, tilting her head slightly away from him.

"Dean,” His name, spoken in a breathy whisper, sounded like stop. _Don't. Please_.

"No." He punctuated the word with a brief kiss, urgent and demanding, a contrast to the needy desperation of his next word. "Please."

Addison kissed him back even as she formulated her reply. "I can't ..." she looked towards the door, then, thought about Derek. What if someone walked in? Or worse, Derek? “We can’t.”

He pulled away, forehead against hers, his hand releasing its grip on her dress and sliding up under the fabric, fingers splaying across the bare skin of her hip. "Just for tonight. It doesn't have to mean ..."

There was a feeble attempt at bravado and confidence in his voice, and she was sure Dean had no idea how desperate he sounded, how fragile, like he'd dissolve into molecules if she’d let go of him.

"Dean —"

He kissed her again; the fan turned on, her protests fluttered away.

Once again she managed to disengage their lips, moving so her temple was pressed against the side of his forehead. Dean was undeterred; he traced his lips along the edge of her jaw, along the column of her throat, whispering, “Is Adrianne even your name?”

“Addison Adrianne.”

“So a technicality, then.”

She made a sound in the back of her throat. "Dean." Stop.

His hand crept higher up her waist.

"Dean." _Don't_.

His tongue swirled around the hollow of her neck.

"Goddamn it, Dean." She wrenched away, shoving him slightly, and he stumbled back, wide eyed. She fixed him with a hard, blazing look, clenching her hands into fists to disguise how much she was shaking. "Don't do that."

Dean blinked at her dazedly. He looked like someone had just jerked the ground out from beneath him. She had never seen him like this before — granted, this was their second meeting, but that Dean in the club and this Dean were so vastly different. "I — ... sorry. But ... you kissed back."

She didn't know what it was about the man but she felt as though she'd known him all her life. He felt like the answer to a prayer.

But sometimes feelings lie.

"And you wouldn't stop." she retorted heatedly, irritated, "I'm not a fucking ... therapy tool, Dean. So don't use me as one, that isn't fair."

“Fair? Using you?” Suddenly his jaw tightened, eyes narrowing. "I’m not the one with a boyfriend here." He let out a short, harsh laugh. "But you come here, and you kiss me back, and now I’m using you.” Dean drawled, an undercurrent of anger thrumming beneath his words.

“You know what, I don’t have to deal with this,” Addison said. She intended to sound angry, but she couldn’t stop the way her voice came out, frail and thin.

She pushed past him and there was a two-second lull before he grabbed onto her arm and pinned her against the wall, desperate, whispering: I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Adrianne. Okay? I didn’t mean what I said. Forgive me, please, please, please.

"Dean, let me go."

"No."

"Dean."

"Adrianne."

"Please."

“Tell me you don’t feel it, too.”

As much as she didn’t want to, she felt it.

She felt it too. And she hated herself for it.

She muttered, “Dean — Julius, I, I can’t. We can't ... Derek ...,” is right out there ... except, she couldn’t get herself to say those words, so she pointed at the door instead. His lips brushed her skin stopping at her ear and murmuring, “Your precious Derek doesn’t have to know.”

She lifted her eyes then, staring at him before closing them when his nose skimmed her neck again. She didn’t want to give in — not on their anniversary of all days.

He smiled when she started to pant, his tongue licked along the column before putting his mouth near her ear again, while his hand snuck under her dress and underwear to cup her there.

“I know you feel it too.”

“I don’t thinks this is a good idea.”

"Good or bad, it won't matter.”

She still had her eyes closed, breath ragging as he started rubbing her slowly before asking her, “Open your eyes?” and when she did, the blue of her irises were completely gone.

He nibbled her neck while his hand was still laying on her sex as she spoke, voice hoarse, “No one MUST know.”

The other hand had now crept higher up under the square neckline of her dress to palm her left breast, then. “So, is it a yes?” and Addison watched his hands before sarcastically asking, “Does it look like a no to you?”

It was not long before they were practically all over each other again, her tongue down his throat, his hand snaring her hair. Dean’s mouth was hot and demanding and she parted her lips with a sigh and slipped her tongue to trace sharp teeth.

It was a strange thing, their mouths pressing, rough and also insistent. Their tongues felt like two matches striking, hot and charged. There was nothing tentative about it, no assurances or seduction needed. Dean tasted like licorice and coffee, the smells from the kitchen and soap and aftershave.

Another moan sounded in the small space between them, its owner unknown to both. Addison raked her fingers through his hair and tugged, forcing back his head and exposing his throat. She sucked wet kisses over his pulse, and swung one leg around, then the other, so she was straddling his waist.

He pulled at her hips, pressing her closer, and then his hands were forcing her mouth to his own, and they were kissing, their bodies rocking together.

All thoughts were eviscerated from her busy mind, save one. Dean, Dean, Dean.

He was kissing her and touching her and swelling against her. She could feel him, feel his hardness pressing against her as they panted, interlocked and undulating, on the wall of the blissfully empty bathroom.

They didn’t need air anymore, only lips and teeth and tongues and sweet sighs. She broke their kiss to deliberately suck a mark into his neck, grabbing the tie and shoving it out of her way. She let her teeth scrape over tender skin, and rejoiced in the helpless sound it pulled from him.

Then she slid her hand down, smoothing over black buttons and black fabric until her fingers fumbled over the black leather belt at his hips. She kissed his lips again, rough and needy, as her hand began to work the buckle.

A hand shot out to her wrist, making her gasp, and they stopped their kissing and petting long enough to meet each other’s eyes.

"The stall," he said, breaking away and she nodded.

It was awkward as they clambered in, but she was motivated to feel something, anything. She’d even be content with guilt.

"I missed you, you know. I haven't stop thinking about you since that night." he rasped, “Every time there was a knock on my door, I was hoping it'd be you.”

She didn’t want to hear that. Because she didn’t want to come to terms with the fact that she thought about it almost every day, every time she took a hit she thought of him, of seeing.

She knew where he lived.

She didn’t say anything, just pulled his vest off and started on his shirt like it was her job. Dean didn’t stop her, just squeezed her thighs, sucking at her mouth again.

"Julius or Dean? Which one is it?" she asked, one button of his shirt quickly undone with each word.

"Julius Evangelos Diamantopoulos. Dean’s an alias." he volleyed, raising one thick eyebrow. An actually Greek God. "And you said you didn't have a boyfriend."

"No," she smiled. "I never expressively said that."

“So, another technicality, then.” he hitched.

And yet she thought of Derek, waiting for her. The acidic taste of betrayal circulated in a close loop in her mind.

She moved along with it trying to make this easiest all while trying to think if this was actually the first time she had had sex in a public bathroom. It was usually a room she avoided — at all costs — but it looked like Dean was making her break another one of her rules. Not that she minded too much when Dean's fingers were digging into her hips and his mouth was covering her own. Dean is moulding their bodies together and sensation of him being everywhere almost made her ignore the fact that she was being pressed against a dirty tile wall of a public restroom. It maybe in a fancy Mechlin restaurant but a public restroom will always be a public restroom.

Hands were everywhere pulling at clothing in the search for skin, for anything. Addison felt the drags of calluses along her back, trailing down her spine and she arches closer to Dean, his breath puffing against her neck. The groan that he lets out sends a thrill all the way down to the base of her spine, and her nails dug into the fabric over his shoulders — broad and how in the hell was this man even built, Addison wondered opened mouthed right before Dean covered it with his own. She put up a mild fight for the dominance in the kiss before letting herself surrender to Dean.

“There is something wrong with this picture,” he grumbled, pulling at her panties and nearly destroying the lace before he pushes the undergarment down her legs. They didn't have time for this, Derek was going to wonder what the hell was she doing and why was she taking so long.

Her hands were now on his pants, working at the button and zipper before shoving them down over his hips. As the cool air conditioned air hits him, he’s pulled directly out of the moment to stare at her eyes, he was not even sure what color they are.

“Do you have anything?” he asked. He smiles slow.

“What, you don’t?”

His fingers were stroking along her hip as she spoke. Addison wanted to slap him in the goddamn face right then and there.

“No, I wasn't looking for a hook up.” he said, feeling disappointed, angry even, that this moment even if it was in a stupid public bathroom was going to be postponed.

All she wanted to do was have Dean fuck her, and fuck her hard. Dean leaned in, his breath hot against her ear. "I'll pull out."

Great. Just the words every girl want to hear.

She went to turn round, to brace herself against the door, but he stopped her.

"No," he said, "I want to see you."

With that, she found herself being lifted up and pressed against the door. Addison scrambled to press her palms against the cool stall wall, letting out a soft breath as she felt one of Dean's hands on her hip. She already knew what’ was coming, but she still bit her lip when he pressed against her.

“Fuck,” she gasped, wishing she had something better to hold herself up against, but she’d rather be touching the door than the seat so there were little miracles there.

The grip Dean had on her hips were nearly painful and definitely bruising. When this was over, when she would go back home she knew she was going to stare at the mirror at her reflection and touch the marks. Only because it was not often that there was someone who bruises her without her demanding it happen. Dean pushed in and the burn was there, but hot on its heels was the pleasure and the want curling in her toes. She pressed her forehead against her forearm and moaned as Dean snapped his hips, pressing into her with an unrelenting speed. An aching want to be able to drag her nails against something, to press hard against a mattress and just scream his name pulled at him, but it was quickly dashed away.

Here she was, the ever-elegant Addison Montgomery moaning in a public restroom of an expensive restaurant as someone she’d really only met twice was fucking her hard and making her shiver and shake with just a want and pleasure. She moved so she could cover her mouth as the moans pour out of her and Dean was there stroking her, and snapping his hips. A low fire burned in her belly and when it hit it did not disappoint. She clenched down hard around him with a scream and a bite under his jaw.

They stayed like that for some time, Addison pressed against the door, Dean holding them both up as they panted into each other's necks. Eventually, he slipped out of her and she felt herself being set down on the floor, her knees wobbling and barely holding her weight.

She was a mess. Dean hadn't fared much better. Both of them moved slowly, cautious of how small the actual space they were inhabiting was. She watched him zip himself up before fastening his vest and leaving the stall. He came back with a roll of tissue and cleaned her up.

"Tonight's gonna be a real big night for you," he said knowingly, buckling his belt up and situating his top with a satisfied look all over his face. "So ... you're gonna need this." he then pulled out a little bag of powder, "Uncut."

At this point, she could practically feel the drug from this afternoon leaving her body.

Clearly, she had not been thinking clearly — an effect when coming off Diamonds.

Sex with Dean was reason enough for more.

She had not been able to take a hit in her own apartment before leaving because Derek was there and she was terrified he’d walk in or find out where she had hidden them or she'd get too cocky and accidentally leave them laying around in her bedroom, like she usually would when she was alone. The pleasant hum that the Diamonds created in her brain was slowly being overtaken by the incessant, infuriating scream of her own thoughts.

She made a mental note to increase her dosage.

She needed it.

Needed it, like air or water. Her body craved for it, her mind craved for it, she, the whole of her, the entirety of Addison needed it. The stimulation. The high. At any cost.

_Oh, she knew she had a problem -- or was it becoming a problem?_

In just two months, she was dependent on it and she didn’t need anyone’s assistance to get her there. She went there all on her because, like she said, from her first hit that night with Dean, she knew it'd be her Achille's heel for the rest of her life.

_It was pure joy and why the fuck would she want to take that away from herself?_

Because since then, she had been bingeing on Diamonds religiously and going out to clubs (no, never Spiders — she didn't want that possibility of running into Dean) every few nights, yet somehow she was able to get to rotations on time and focus, even later to her part-time work as a research assistant for a professor. She made new friends, a couple of undergrads from NYU -- _Psychology? Art? Fashion? History?_

Well, it was something unremarkably boring that she couldn't remember.

They'd call her on the telephone and tell her of the club they'd be hopping to and she'd meet them there and they didn't even have to wait in line because the bouncers would just let them through, and she'd dance for the next fourteen hours straight, drenched in sweat, biting her lips and chewing the inside of her cheeks. She would cap the night at one in the morning, sometimes two or three, and sink herself to sleep with a couple of shots of Jack and a tablet or two of Ativan. In the morning, she'd drink a few Red Bulls, make sure there was a bump in her and she was good to go.

Derek didn't know about the partying because he never got the chance to know since, you know, they didn't live in the same apartment, she wasn't going to report to him (she was her own person), he thought she was sleeping, and most of the time she partied when he had the night calls. Sometimes, she didn't care, she'd go out anyway. And when they did see each other on the weekdays, it was usually just for a few hours in his apartment. Never hers. Some weeks she wouldn't even talk to him until Sunday rolled in.

They were that busy.

Life was on her side for once. She had everything strategically planned out.

And when she was high, the world and her brain finally saw eye-to-eye and it was just a matter of how much she cared.

There was a reason why users do not buy drugs in bulk, not bulk as in kilos, but bulk to last a couple of months, like she had bought naively to last her a whole semester, which she blew through in just a couple of weeks — because the temptation was there. She knew where she had hidden them, she knew she just needed a little bit more to feel alive again, to make this happiness last a little while longer, to get things done, to drink more and she knew if she'd go out to any club she'd be able to do lines off toilets in a black-lit bathroom with some stranger. Most of the time, she didn't even have to pay for it and she'd only let them touch her while she was high and then, she'd immediately delete the experience.

It didn't matter what she was doing or what they were doing to her because at that moment everything felt so good.

When she had bought them initially, she didn’t quite need them all the time. She still had an ounce of control, then. Now, she learned that buying anything less than an eightball was useless. It would more or less last her three days if she was keeping track, two if she was having a rough day, whether be it life, medical school or Derek taking his frustrations out on her. Most users would make a gram last a couple of days while sometimes, she went through it in a day. Sometimes a sitting if she wanted to keep having a good time.

Because the feeling of her heart rate increasing, her head bursting, the extreme euphoria, the stimulation, the distraction … it far outweighed everything else. There was no boredom. There was no emptiness. There was only excitement and adrenaline and clarity and all of it was in her own mind, sparked by a simple line of powdered solution.

Now, the world moved so slowly as she moved quickly to pick up the straw. It all spun around her. Round and round the garden, like a teddy bear …

It had looked almost beautiful. The gleaming straw, the glass beneath the pure, crystalline white. And she had gritted her teeth as she pulled the straw up to her nose, lined it with the powder, because she knew she was going to vehemently regret this. And she knew she needed it, because she had nothing else.

Without **Diamonds** , she was nothing.

 _Who was she before_ **Diamonds** _?_

Nobody but a girl who was in medical school. Yeah, she was smart, but so was everyone else around her. She graduated Valedictorian in high school, now, she was average at best. But that was all before she started with the pills and everything else in between. Because Addy made her study better and Diamonds helped her get things done and altogether, she was once again doing good. She didn't feel like a zombie anymore.

“You gonna or what?" Dean asked, still waiting for her to take whiff.

As soon as the powder hit her nostril, she didn't even mind the burn anymore, it was like the world picked up speed and it was finally moving at the speed of her brain and she could breathe again.

Her fingers trembled; her mouth was open as she breathed heavily. Her heart was racing, racing, racing …veins full of more than just hot blood.

Her eyes, wide open. Dilated. Bloodshot. Blinking rapidly. She saw everything, everything, good glorious god, she could see absolutely every detail, make absolutely every deduction, figure everything out. Everything was hers, she owned it all. Nothing went unsolved. Nothing escaped. She was everything.

She felt tall and not just tall in stature. She was taller than everyone, taller than the world, taller than all the normal people with normal minds. And she thought normal things were little things and important things were big things, and she could only bother herself with big things.

Oh, how wrong she was.

The high washed over her as she took a deep breath, ears ringing. When her head fell back, Dean was frowning at her slightly.

"You've done this without me."

"I'm sorry." she smiled coyly.

Dean took his turn and leaned in to kiss her softly, almost reverently, before leaving the stall.

* * *

Derek didn't suspect a thing. Just asked if everything was alright because — yeah, sure, she was in the bathroom for a while. But Derek was just being Derek. He cared too much or perhaps, he cared the appropriate amount and just just couldn't seem to.

"Fine," was her reply, rubbing her nose and sniffing back before giving Derek a bright smile. She had reapplied lipstick and fixed her hair as best she could and maybe it was the Diamonds talking but she felt nothing but a blissful hum of euphoria deep within her.

And if she were to get caught tonight — honestly, she'd be vibrating with too much energy that the severity wouldn't even sink in until five hours later. Maybe, even tomorrow if she was lucky.

The short-term effects of Diamonds usually come on hard and fast and are intense, but only last for fifteen minutes to an hour.

Dean had not given her much (uncut was a lot more expensive), so even an hour would be a stretch for her.

_How much difference could an hour make, though?_

She'd be home soon, so she'd have time before she would even come down.

It wouldn't kill her. No, nothing could kill her right now. She was Addison Montgomery. She was invincible. Nothing could touch her.

Derek smiled back. And she really should get an Academy Award for all of her performances. Really. She was that astonishingly good — not to toot her own horn or anything but that was just the truth.

As time went on, they smiled; they talked; they laughed while her leg bounced underneath the table.

They ate, or more like Derek ate while she tried to stuff her mouth with food. She was not hungry. She couldn't get hungry when she was high. Just could not. And so she was very focused on the task in hand — eating, because this wasn't just any other night, home alone where she could just skip a meal or all three because she didn't have an appetite. It was their anniversary and Derek was spending all this money on her. So, she focused on the New York strip steak, cutting it to bite size pieces, forked it and then, stuffed it into her mouth. She did it again. Cut the beef — was she cutting it properly? Was she holding the knife properly? She hoped she was. Bizzy would just kill her if she wasn't.

This time, though, as she sliced, she cut with a lot more force than intended to and it scratched the bottom of the plate and made a Godawful sound that caused everyone in the restaurant to turn around and look at her, and including Dean.

 _Why couldn't she have gotten the sea-bass?_ It would just melt like butter. Speaking of butter, she needed more wine and with that thought in mind, somehow, by one way or another, or magic, Dean materialised to their table, "More wine?" he asked.

"Yes, please," Derek said, then thanking Dean as he poured them another glass.

She ignored Dean. Didn't dare to look at him. Why didn't she say thank you, too? Why did she ignore him? Ignoring him would bring more suspicions than not. Why was she questioning her actions? Maybe she was in the wrong? Why was she doubting herself? She did not but Derek didn't seem to notice anything.

He talked and she talked, hoping she wasn't talking too fast. Diamonds could do that to you. Was she talking too fast? Could she hear herself? ... She was a mess. She wondered what the new steakhouse across her street was like. It was probably better than her cooking. Could she even cook? She missed her dog. He was a good pet. Or was he a girl? Couldn't remember. Where were her glasses? She looked in her purse for a second. Nope. She probably have left it in her bedroom.

The pianist was playing a song that sang to her and she swayed to the tune of it; she was having an incredible night with Derek, dancing with need and energy. And that was only until the powder fully dissolved into her veins, and she started to feel her nerves singing back to her. It was a transition like a flick of a switch and her brain told her that she needed more. More. More. More. More. She rested her elbow on the table, head on her palm — she was dizzy and irritated and her nerves were on fire with the need for more Diamonds. All she could think of was flagging down Dean so he could help her because he'd be feeling the same way too. But he was much bigger than her so the drugs would have worn off long before hers did. He must have done another line by now.

She looked around, Dean was nowhere in sight and that almost made her blood boil — just almost.

_How long had it been?_

An hour. It's been an hour. They've been here an hour. Obviously. Look at the clock. Don't be stupid.

It wore off. The brilliance, the beauty, the clarity. It all wore off. Everything was suddenly so boring and stupid and obvious now. Her blood was pure red, the Diamonds were crystallised powder. She had nothing left now, she had nothing now.

_Who was she?_

Go ahead. Take some more. Why not? She couldn't die. She was invincible, she was immortal. She was not human. She was not God. She didn't know what she was, but she didn't care. All she wanted was some more of it, some more of what she needed. Because she would do anything to stop that feeling of sadness from creeping in. To escape her mind. Nobody knew what it was like in there. Nobody could understand.

Because whenever she felt good she thinks it will last forever. But it's never like that.

Users with Diamonds dependence may experience a "crash" after this short fifteen minute-one hour period, commonly a feeling of severe depression. This may prompt the use of either alcohol, similar drugs _(such as Black Pearl or Chalk)_ , or repeated Diamonds use.

She looked in her bag. She did not bring it. She didn't bring it! Fuck! Maybe if she just find Dean and get some from Dean. Dean, Dean, Dean ...where was he? The man was going to save her life again.

"Are you okay?”

“What?” That was the second time Derek had asked that tonight. It was just weird. _Did she not look okay? Was she trying too hard to act normal? Was she blinking too much?_

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, w-why wouldn’t I be?” she started fixing her dress just in case, “Do I not look okay?”

“You’ve been acting weird all night. Is something going on?" he asked before adding, "Are you looking for someone?”

That was when panic started to set in. Think of something. Think of an excuse. Don't lie. Just tell the truth, misleadingly. Her hands were sweaty again. Her mind raced while she tried to think and translate her thoughts into words. “Yeah — no, just the waiter. I need more wine. Everything’s fine, Derek. I'm having a wonderful time. Just a little tired. Nothing I can't handle.”

Not exactly a lie.

Derek stared back at her with narrowed eyes. It made her uncomfortable, like he could see past the twisted truth and into her soul and see what had happened in the restroom, and the clubs, and the drugs, but that was stupid. He wasn't psychic. “Are you sure that’s all it is?”

She put on a smirk only because she felt like that was what the old her would’ve done last year or even just last semester, “I think you’d know if I was lying.”

His eyes roll, but he was smiling. “I would, but as long as you’re okay … dessert?”

Thank God that worked, she sighed a sigh of relief, then.

Towards the end of the night, as she got increasingly aware of the further change in her mood, she begun to wonder if Derek was still onto her. Did he know? He had to — she couldn't shut her mouth just fifteen minutes ago and now, she was as quiet as a mouse. Did everyone here know? As the sweat crept up her neck, she gulped down every last drop of Derek's wine, that he'd given her, and that still was not enough.

And because of the fog in her brain, she didn't realise that the pianist had been playing their song and it was only when Derek got on one knee that she did.

"Did you — did you drop something, Derek? What are you looking for —" she stopped mid sentence — no, no, no —freezing when she finally put two and two together, and saw what he had in his hand. "Derek —" she whispered, eyes bulging right out of her sockets as the diamond winked at her, "Derek, what, what are you doing?"

"Addison Adrianne Forbes Montgomery ..." he started.

This was what Dean was talking about — the big night for her. She found herself searching for his face in the sea of people staring at them. Dean knew, which meant that Derek had had this planned out all this time. And here she was, ruining it for him.

"The moment I saw you for the very first time will always be stuck in my memory because it was the day when the course of my life radically changed its direction ..."

She remembered that day, remembered meeting — rather, bumping into him in the campus library. He was so shy, she could tell, and now, she felt a sob perched at the back of her throat.

"I once read, 'Happiness is only real when shared.' I didn’t understand the depth of that statement until I met you, Addie, because you are the perfect person for me. You love to go where life takes you and I’m so grateful that life brought you to me, because I know that no matter what our future brings, we will have each other ..."

That was when her brain decided to attack her with memories, real and very real ones until she was crying. She pressed fingers to her eyes to make them stop and she gnawed at the insides of her cheeks. She was positively livid at herself for having strayed off so far away.

It was all her fault, she did this to herself.

She stayed silent, with her head hanging low again, while the tears continued to run down her cheeks. Some drops emerged and dripped from her nose. She sniffled again.

She couldn't bear to look at Derek.

"I am looking forward to the day when my last name will become ours. You are the one I want to be for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer. My voice is trembling, and my heart is beating right out of my chest -- I hope you will say me yes and make me the luckiest man on Earth. I love you so much, darling. Will you marry me?"

Her gaze finally found Dean's — he looked her, bored, and were it not for the strange wildness in his eyes.

She said yes -- of course, she did. She looked at Derek, wide-eyed, wiping the tears away and replied like they did in the movies, “Yes! Yes, I will marry you."

"I love you," Derek said, slipping the ring onto her finger as he began to laugh.

She joined him in laughter while the crowd's cheers drowned out behind her, “I love you, too."

Derek continued to laugh and nodded, his eyes beginning to form tears as he kissed her.

She broke the kiss and looked at Derek, taking his hand and whispered, "We're getting married," and guilt of the both times finally kicked in.

She could not say no, she told herself, not after tonight, not after that speech, not after everyone was expecting her to say yes. The pressure. She couldn't humiliate Derek like that. Not in front of all these people. No would equals to losing him forever.

Because to say no was to come clean with all that she had done and she did not want that. She did not want to let go. What she wanted was more Diamonds, a girl's best friend — it was all her mind could think about, still and as she glanced over at where Dean had been, maybe he could help her again, he was gone.


	4. Candy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Present: Addison spends her weekends in rehab.

_"Life's beautiful; why blow it?"_

* * *

It feels a little like a crash landing, to go from being a mindless, selfish addict, to being human again. A human being with all the right feelings, and thoughts, and guilt. Oh, so much guilt. It’s almost too much to deal with at times.

She had always assumed that drugs and alcohol were her problem, and that everything would be okay as soon as she got sober. But every time she got clean, she'd run straight back to drugs.

Now, she realises that the crux of her addiction was bigger than just bad behaviour. It's her thinking; the way she made the world completely about her and her sadness and her hate and her anger, to the point that anything good was completely obscured by her narcissism. Instead of realising she was hurting her family, she could only complain that if it weren’t for their repeated interventions, they would still have a good relationship — that they should let her do whatever the hell she wanted. It didn’t matter that half the time she begged them to intervene.

She just couldn’t see it.

Once, after holing up for days in her apartment, after their first intervention that ended with everyone just yelling at her and her storming out with Dean _(her parents had offered to help Dean too if he wanted),_ she found her way to her dad’s clinic and banged on his door, wailing that she needed help.

_Captain. Dad, I'm sorry. I need help. Please. Please._

_Alright, kitten. It's okay._

_I screwed up, Dad. Now, I don't know how to get out of it._

_Let me finish up with Mrs. Ibanescu. Mmhm?_

_Okay._

_Aileen, would you take Addison to my office?_

But, three minutes later, when he tried to get her to talk, she had talked herself out of it and she brushed him off.

She said it wasn’t serious and she went straight home to Dean.

It's easier to lose yourself in drugs than it is to cope with life.

Now, as she goes back to her room, Addison closes the door behind her with a sinking feeling in her gut — a feeling that had quickly turned to a deep and aching pain. As soon as she slides the lock across, she leans back heavily against the door, eyes falling closed as she swallows hard. A shaky hand lifted to rub over her abdomen and she feels the muscles twitching and contorting there, below the expanse of her skin.

Her mostly pleasant, uneventful day has been quickly whisked away by the night — a night spent pressed in tight against cool, white tiles with her head hung low over the toilet bowl. By the time dawn crept through her room with its low, milky light, she was spent.

Medication comes with breakfast. They give her just enough of a reprieve from the cold sweats, shakes, and nausea that she could finally sleep. It is the weekend and over the weekends, a lot of people would leave — the building would be much more empty then, everyone scarce. Quiet. Lonely, almost. She has no one to spend her weekends with and no one comes to see her.

Granted, she is in Colorado after all.

This is not her first stint in rehab. Actually this is her second time in this very facility. The first having ended when she convinced another patient to runaway with her and they hitchhiked their way back to New York.

The last she heard of him was that he had overdosed.

Five failed attempts _(excluding overdoses and detoxification that had her hospitalised)_. She's decided this is her last try to cleanse herself or this problem, one that she can't seem to shake from her shoulders.

This has to be the last time.

 _Please_.

The lifestyle she lived was exhausting and as she looked back, all it did was made her really sad.

It ends here, once and for all, there really is no going back for her. Because if she does, she won't be waking up.

She'll make sure she doesn't.

* * *

The first rehab she went to was in a high-end treatment centre that cost her father 90,000 dollars for a month-long stay. He was thrilled that she was seeking help. But she said she'd only go if Dean was going with her.

Her father was not very happy, then.

She hoped to find a career as an actress — _who knows who she would meet at a treatment centre in Los Angeles?_ Her capacity for self-deception would have been funny if it weren’t so tragic. There she was in Malibu, wearing a sweater — a sweater in Southern California summer for crying out loud — her untamed bleach blonde hair with overgrown roots, hoping to be 'discovered'.

She had no idea how delusional she was.

The treatment centre was a sprawling set of lodges overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It housed roughly two dozen patients at a time. The first thing she did was collapse on her bed and sleep for three days straight. When she finally woke up, she saw two sets of eyes peering at her.

“I’m Candice,” one girl said.

“And I’m Lilian,” said the other. “And you’re in Drew Barrymore’s old bed. She just left.”

There, she went to every meeting, talked earnestly to her counsellors, exercised, learned to meditate, and took part in group therapy and psychodrama, a technique where they use role-play to work through their issues. Still, she wasn’t getting better. All she could think about was getting home and getting high, which they promptly did, the moment they landed.

Then, came Silver Hill, in New Canaan. This one lasted three days before they kicked her out for fooling around with another patient.

She finds that she can't really have friends. She either sleep with them or ruin their lives or kill them, even — however you want to see it.

From there, she went to treatment in New Hemisphere, where she dismissed the notion of addiction to such a degree that she was asked to leave after 10 days because she was undermining the recovery of other people. They told her they had never seen someone so deep in denial before.

_Fine! I'm going! I didn't even want to be here in the first place!_

One time, she was so high that she sat cross-legged in the middle of the intersection at Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street, stopping traffic. The police took her to Mount Sinai, and later she was sent to a psychiatric ward in NewYork Presbyterian where she was chastised and judged and treated so poorly, as though she was lower than scum, by the same people whom she had gone to medical school with. She checked herself out after a few days and Bizzy forced her into an outpatient facility in Connecticut.

She hated it there.

She was even more miserable sober than she was when she used. She couldn’t sit still. She was feverish all the time. Without drugs, she became addicted to controlling her weight, and developed a form of exercise bulimia, where she'd eat entire boxes of cakes and pastries and run for hours to burn off the calories. She told the counsellors she was getting worse. They encouraged her to stop focusing on the negative — that she was giving new patients the impression that their programme didn’t work.

But it did not.

And it was always on her. The blame and the finger pointing. She felt like everything was her fault.

A few days before her treatment was over, she relapsed. She went to a bar in downtown Boston (how she ended up in Boston is still a mystery.), downed a few shots of Jack Daniel's and found a Candy dealer within minutes.

She snorted a tonne that night. She missed curfew, and bought clean urine from the dealer’s mom so she could pass the drug test at rehab in the morning. The counsellors busted her the next day, and, three days later, her father put her on a plane to Provence so she could see her grandmother before either one of them dies.

She thought there was no saving her.

* * *

The last time she went to a facility was because Derek caught her almost jumping off the balcony of her condo.

Well, that and one other reason was why he ratted her out to her parents.

She's sick, Bizzy. It's not just the drugs. She's hearing voices again.

Because Derek had told her to go out onto the balcony, that a plane was coming to save her from this hell she was living. So, she gingerly made her way to the balcony and slid open the door, wanting to make him happy again. He was also so disappointed with her. That look - it was a constant on his face and she wanted to change it. She stepped into the cool night air and tried to climb over the railing. As she started her descent, he screamed, and rushed outside, grabbing her; he’d told her no such thing.

She had hallucinated the conversation.

That evening she couldn't sleep, no matter how hard she tried. Her head spun and throbbed, skin sticky with cold-sweat. She needed more, she knew that and it was also she could think about. She hadn't had a chance to re-up like she planned to because Derek had been at her apartmentall day long (leaving the apartment would mean that she was going to see her dealer and he'd know that. Besides she didn't feel like fight him again.) and she didn't want to do drugs when he was around; that was one of her rules. Granted, she had already broken every rule she had made for herself— so why keep this one?

She would have to be very desperate to shot up in front of Derek.That would be her rock bottom.

He shook her, murmuring her name, telling her it was okay, that it was just a nightmare — but didn't he know she was awake? And then, she sat bolt upright head in hands, talking furiously.

"Shut up," she was yelling, "Just shut up." Then, she was sobbing, rocking, "Please, please, just stop talking."

He pulled her towards him so that her head was resting on his shoulder, rocking her, "It's okay. You're safe," he repeated.

She turned to look at him, and she realised that Derek was awake too. It wasn't all in her head. Then, she started to cry, great racking sobs as he held her, and rocked her and stroked her hair. "Help me, Derek," she whispered, "Make them stop."

"Make what stop?" he asked gently, but that only made it worse.

He sat there and held her for a long, long time, until she finally pulled away and stumbled off to the bathroom, where he found her several minutes later, hands clenched onto the washbasin, staring at herself in the mirror and having a furious whispered conversation — with herself? Trying to talk herself out of needing more drugs, maybe? — because what she was going through had to be withdrawals. Right? She had only shot up a couple of hours ago. She was in the bathroom 'taking a bath' for a very long time, but since her tolerance was atrocious now, she was going through withdrawals like clockwork.

He stood silently, wondering how best to announce his presence. But then, as he stood and listened to what she was saying, he realised with a cold, gut churning realisation that what he was witnessing was one side of a conversation with somebody that only she could hear.

Derek had spent the last eight months of his life in the pits of Mount Sinai, with a fair number of mental health patients among all the rest. In that time he had met patients with just about every variation of depression, self-harm, personality disorder and psychosis that you could come across in a textbook; but witnessing the woman he loved in the throws of full-blown auditory hallucinations was almost more than he could bear. He resisted the impulse to allow himself to crumble, to slide to the floor on knees that had suddenly gone weak, bury his head in his arms and cry, and forced himself into work mode.

"What are they saying?" he asked quietly.

Addison startled, only just registering his presence.

"The voices that you're talking to," he continued calmly, "What are they saying?"

She closed her eyes and shook her head. He allowed her a few minutes of silence before grasping her shoulders, "Come back to bed," he said, trying to keep his voice calm and level.

"That's only going to make it worse."

"Then, we'll find you something to make it better."

"You're not going to like it," she whispered, still unable to look at him, but allowing him to guide her gently back to bed. Once she was on the bed, her eyes fluttered to his.

Derek sighed, rubbing his face frustratingly with his hands. "Fine. Just a few milligrams and I'll be watching."

And that was what he did the entire night; watching her.

He listened as she called her dealer. Ten minutes later, there was a knock on the door. She paid him and walked past him without so much as a glance or acknowledgment, even, and into her bedroom. As he followed her, he found her sitting on the edge of the bed, back turned towards him.

He could never understand her problem with drugs. She didn't seem or look the type to be hooked, to have a problem — not like Amy. And now, she was chasing the dragon to chase away the memories and the darkness.

This drug was dangerous enough though, serious drugs, not just the odd joint or an ecstasy tablet on a Saturday night. But this, this proof of what she had procured for herself was because of her stubborn refusal to look at this as an illness.

She had barely gotten the needle out of her arm before she was falling backwards onto the mattress.

Rubbing his face with one hand, he stepped towards her, slipping the needle out of her vein. Her arm — they were cracked, bruised and dirty. Ruined. He went to get alcohol and a cotton swab from the first-aid kit in the bathroom to wipe over her arm to keep them from getting an infection.

He slowly looked around the bedroom.

_What had his life become?_

He wanted to hate her.

He fucking hated her.

He hated who she'd become.

A shell of herself.

But he loved her — he loved her so very much and he'd do anything for her.

His stomach twisted angrily and he bowed his head, starting to cry.

Even buying drugs for her so she would stop being miserable, he would.

He basically had.

He looked up, and though he could barely see from the tears stinging his eyes, he could make out the rest of the bag on the nightstand.

"Sorry," she mumbled, propping herself up on her elbows. She was so high she could barely keep her eyes open. She was nodding out.

Derek laid down next to her, absolutely spent.

Addison frowned, turning her eyes back towards the ceiling. "Please ... don't be mad ... I'm fucked up... okay?"

Derek didn't moved, just laid stone still beside her. "I'm not mad, Addie. It just saddens me to see you like this." Addison was silent, fading in and out. "Addison?"

"It's okay, Derek. I'm okay."

He gave a bitter laugh. She seemed pretty out of it, so he let himself talk, knowing that she won't be able to remember any of this tomorrow. "It's not though, is it? None of this is okay. I just watched you stick a needle into your vein." It was one thing to be obliviously aware that she did it but to actually watch her ... 'cook' and then, shoot up was something else entirely.

"None of this is okay, Addie," he whispered. "You should get out of this before you end up even more hurt or worse ..."

 _Dead_.

She slowly reached her right arm up and draped it around Derek's waist. "I love you. It will get better, I promise." she mumbled.

He shook his head slowly, "I really don't think so, not this time."

* * *

When she woke up, Derek was gone. She didn't think anything of it since it was already well past noon.

So as she stumbled into the living room, after taking another hit, her parents and Archer were there, waiting for her.

Just the three of them.

Over time, she noticed the people in her 'interventions' had gotten lesser and lesser.

_Had they all given up on her?_

_Don't they care about her anymore?_

"No. No. No." she said, pointing at the suitcase by her mother's foot. "What's that? I'm not going anywhere."

"Yes, you are." Bizzy said.

"No! What did he tell you! He's lying! It's not true!" she was fuming with rage, so angry at Derek for telling on her.

They gave her an ultimatum — treatment or she'd be cut off from everyone's life for good. No financial assistance, like the Captain had been doing with all her bills. She already had no access to her trust fund or any of her bank accounts. Her mother had the housekeeper come over to stock her refrigerator and cabinets with food every two weeks.

_But didn't they know she don't eat?_

She had sold her old apartment, which the Captain had gotten for her when she first moved to New York City, to feed her addiction. And now, they've gotten her a new apartment so they wouldn't have to answer their friends at the club as to why their daughter was sleeping in her car or was seen coming out from the Plaza day after day with strange looking men.

"We have tolerated your endeavours, Addison. Drugs, the strange people in your apartment, the prostitution —" her mother said as her face soured with disgust.

"I was an escort. I never slept with any of them."

Her mother made a noncommittal sound. "I cannot go to anywhere without people gawking and whispering behind my back. It is time you follow us."

"No. I’m not a teenager. You can't force me.”

“No, you’re right. You aren’t a teenager. It is far worse. You’re a grown woman who cannot be bothered to try to keep herself alive, so I have to do it for you. While I am doing that I’m afraid that I will be making the rules.”

She was so incredibly miserable with or without the drugs. She knew she needed help but she was so stubborn that she didn't want to accept the fact that she had totally and entirely ruined her life. She didn't see a point in everyone wanting to save her when she clearly didn't want go be saved.

After choosing the latter, she couldn't remember much of what happened next. Just bits and pieces. She remembered feeling the sharp prick of a needle breaking her skin and her being in shock, surprise that turning into anger again. Then, her entire arm was burning from the inside out. She remembered screaming, and being dragged like a ragged doll, kicking and punching at the air.

Apparently, they had held her down and drugged her before flying her across states where she ended up in Colorado.

She remembered finally coming to in the car on the way to the facility and threatened to jump out if they didn't stop.

They did not stop. She did not jump out of the moving car.

It was a half hour drive to the facility, where she spent arms crossed and sitting in between Bizzy and Archer, feeling sick to her stomach. She knew it was the withdrawals kicking in.

Once the car rolled to a stop, Archer helped her out. She quickly elbowed him and attempted to make a run for it but all that resulted was her stumbling and skinning her palms and knees as she fell to the ground.

"Please. Please, Archer. I'll stop. I promise. I'll stop. Just take me home. Please. I'm going to be sick, Archer. I need it. Please."

Archer didn't crack one bit.

"Fine. Asshole. I hate you." she screamed, crossing her arms as they reached the lobby and were met with a women, two nurses and two orderlies. She attempted to shake her arm free but he held onto her up until they searched her pockets for drugs or weapons and the like.

Everyone had been quiet, only nodding and mumbling 'Mmhm' with everything the director sitting at the desk in the lobby of Devereux Behavioural Health was telling them. Archer had gone back to the car without so much as a goodbye.

She could feel it — this facility was not like the others.

While she found herself wanting to run straight out of the building with every new rule or regulation the woman mentioned, her parents seemed to be all too happy to agree to all the terms and conditions of her stay here. It would have looked like they were glad to be rid of her.

Then, it came time to search her bags.

With visible reluctance, she handed her bag over to the man standing next to her, who thanked her politely before putting it down on the table and opening the clasps. The reluctance was as if the bag represented the last thing she owned at this point in time. Everything else had been taken away from her; her home, her education, her contact with the rest of the world …

Everything.

"All seems to be in order, miss," one of the orderlies eventually said when he and his co-worker had neatly folded up all the garments and rearranged the rest of her books and things into the suitcase, which at last allowed her to breathe again.

After only having been inside the building for some thirty minutes — and that was only in the lobby — she was already positive that the two guards probably had a lot more difficulty keeping everyone who was inside of this miserable place in it, than preventing people from outside of it from entering.

"Well, I’ve showed you the terms and conditions of your stay, we’ve signed the paperwork, your clothes and suitcase have been searched through ..." the woman behind the desk summed up, "All we need to do now is for you to just sign this last document and then your admission will be official."

"What does it say?"

She frowned while her eyes quickly skimmed over the document and found a sentence containing the words ‘restraint to institution until further notice’.

"The main thing is that by signing this contract, you agree that you will be staying here until the people in charge of your care are unanimously convinced that you are ready to return to society again," the director told her in the calmest voice, as if detaining people inside this — this ... mental prison was the most normal thing in the world and absolutely could not be disapproved of or seen as inhumane by any sensible person.

"What?" she asked with a look of disbelief and shock for what she was about to sign up for.

"Just sign for it, kitten," she heard the voice of her father encouraging her to go along with what the contract stated, and Addison turned around to look at her parents to see if they were serious about this.

The grave expression on their faces immediately told her that they seemed to agree with these conditions — perhaps even gladly agreed with them — and she had a hard time not saying something she was going to regret towards either her parents or the director of this facility.

Nobody wants you anymore! They're getting rid of you.

"No! No!"

"They won’t, darling," Bizzy told her in a soft and soothing voice that was so unlike her mother.

"It sure does fucking look like it!" she sneered at her with the thought of what she was trying to push her into.

"Miss Montgomery … Or Addison, can I call you that?"

A new voice joined in on the conversation; a new voice coming from a person who had been with them in the lobby since the moment they arrived, but who had not said more than a few words so far.

She nodded at the psychiatric nurse, holding her body tight, clenching down so the shakes wouldn't be too obvious. She wanted to be left alone, but she knew she was never going to get rid of the nurses and guards anytime soon.

"Addison, I can assure you they won’t hold you prisoner here, or even detain you against your will. This regulation is not here to work against you, but purely to protect you from yourself."

It was just a shame that Addison could not get herself to believe a word he said.

"Protect me from myself?" Addison repeated in a mumble.

She had heard that lie before.

To ‘protect her from herself’, a concept that no one had ever really explained to her. It was as if they all used it as an easy excuse to make her do things she didn’t want to do. As if she would immediately respect decisions and view them as being good for her if people told her they were ‘to protect her from herself’.

"You know, you might find yourself wanting to leave sometimes as a result of feeling down for a while," the psych nurse started off, "By signing this contract, you protect yourself from these impulses that can have big consequences, such as signing yourself out on the fly without fully realising what you’re doing. You are, after all, more prone to …" he stopped to think of the right words for a moment, as to not upset her, and eventually chose to finish his sentence with the words: "mood swings and being overemotional, which negatively affects your ability to judge a situation correctly."

Just run! Run before they keep you in for good!

"Shut up." she hissed.

"Excuse me?"

"Nothing." she shrugged.

The older woman eyes her before continuing, "As explained, this regulation is not one to worry about, Addison. In fact, your psychiatrist and parents have already signed for it," she told her.

Addison had no idea if she was hoping that hearing this was going to make her feel more comfortable about putting her signature underneath the contract; because if this had been her aim, Addison was afraid she was going to have to disappoint her.

"You signed for this?!" Addison spat out once she had spun around to face her parents.

She had expected them to at least take a step back, but they didn’t even blink when she looked at them as if they had just sold her soul to the devil himself.

"It’s for your own good," the Captain told her somewhat apologetically but mainly determinedly.

She was furious.

They kidnapped you and now they're going to lock you up!

"Why did they even need your signature on this? I’m twenty-six, you’re not responsible for me anymore! You don’t own me anymore!" she said, and hoped it would hurt.

It was their fault anyway.

"In your current position, they are responsible for you," the woman told her as if she was correcting a three year old repeating a song they had heard on the radio incorrectly. "By signing this paper, your parents have agreed to be the ones to look after you once you’ll be dismissed. That’s also why you can’t leave without their permission, because then they’d have to take care for you in a stage where they might not yet be able to correctly handle your problems."

They’ve dealt with me for long enough to know exactly how to deal with me, she wanted to shout back. But then she was here because of her parents. So they did not really know how to handle her.

"You know what? Fine. Good for them that they signed it, but I won’t," she said as she pushed the paper and pen away from her side of the desk.

If she was not going to do as they said, they were simply going to refuse her the treatment even she knew she was badly in need of. It was cruel, it was inhumane, possibly even illegal, but she knew that this was how things worked here — nine out of ten times, an addict will never agree to treatment.

"We can’t help you if you don’t sign this contract. You have to put your trust in us."

"And give up my legal capacity to make my own decisions?"

"Miss Montgomery," the woman continued ever so calmly, "I hope you do realise that with your mental condition at the moment, it’s better for you to leave making decisions to someone else —"

"My mental condition? I'm not crazy!" she interrupted her mid-sentence, no longer able to oppress her anger towards eternally being treated as if she was crazy, irresponsible, incapable of thinking and acting according to reasonable thinking patterns that they seemed to be afraid she’d lost once the psychosis started taking control of her again.

Yes, she'd had psychotic episodes, twice. Substance-induced psychosis. Yes, she almost jumped off her balcony but that was the drugs. Not her mental condition.

"No one is saying you are crazy, Addison. But as you know, your drug use have been adversely affecting the chemical balance in your brain." the director said, and she felt a wave of anger and hurt washing over her; the feeling of having been betrayed, being exposed, even.

"Are you hearing voices right now, Addison?"

"And what’s your point?"

"My point is, we are not yet exactly sure how your mental capacity affects you and your capability of logical reasoning, and this is why we leave your parents and your therapist to decide for you when you can leave this institution again," she was bringing this information to her as if it was an advantage to her that her parents had been appointed to decide over her fate — as if it was something for her to be grateful about instead of angry.

"We will not hold you prisoner here, and in consultation with your psychiatrist and your parents, you can always leave earlier than we planned for you."

Addison squinted her eyes at her — she knew she was losing and then tears gathering in her eyes attested to that. "I don’t believe you."

"I can guarantee you that Ms. Proctor is speaking the truth." the psychiatric nurse said, looking towards the director, and nodding heavily at her.

"Please just sign the paper, Addison. You know how hard we fought to find you a place here," her mother nearly begged her.

She could never quite resist her mother when she sounded like she was on the edge of tears by something she was putting her through. She didn’t know if she was manipulating her or if it was just a voice in her head telling her this but it was working either way.

These days, she had not been sure of what was real or not.

She loved her parents and needed them more than anything in the world right now, which was why it hurt her even more that they were trying to get rid of her. She just wanted them to love her back, and the problem was that they did, but just not in the way she wanted them to love her. They could not see that she didn’t want professional help; she wanted to be loved by her parents, her family, her friends, and most of all, she wanted to be surrounded by them, something her parents were currently making impossible for her by sending her out to this hell place.

"Come on, kitten," her father said as he stepped forward, picked the pen up from the secretary’s hand, and put in between the fingers of his daughter. "Do it for us."

With shaky hands, anger towards her father for guilt-tripping her into giving in and tears of frustration and pure terror of what people were going to do with her once she had handed her right to decide over her own fate over to them, Addison begrudgingly put her signature at the bottom of the paper, next to that of her psychiatrist, her father’s, and her mother’s.

Betrayers, she found herself thinking.

"So then that’s settled. Thank you for your cooperation," she said, and although her voice did not necessarily sound sarcastic but actually relieved and grateful she was finally cooperating, she still did not trust her. "Now, is there anything you want to say to your parents before Nurse McFarland will show you around the place?"

"Yes," she said while turning to the two betrayers standing at the other side of the desk. "You’re making a big mistake." The last word was not so much said as much as it was squeaked; she was choking on tears and both her and her parents knew she was not going to be able to hold up her composure for much longer.

Still, they were just sending her away to make things easier for themselves, because they didn’t want to deal with her anymore, because they wanted to hurt her for having hurt them with the drugs and the stealing and the constant in and out of facilities and the overdoses.

It wasn't her fault, this time.

"How can you do this to me?" she said as she sobbed her heart out.

"I don’t … I don’t want to be alone," she sniffed in a voice that sounded terribly small.

"Oh, don't be so dramatic, Addison. We’re doing what’s right for you. We don't want to have to bury you." her mother said as she carefully patted her on the shoulder. One. Two. Three. "There, there." was Bizzy's attempt at comforting her. "What is this, Addison? We’re WASPs. We don’t cry, confront or be honest with each other. Now, hush."

"It’s going to be hard right now, but one day you’ll be thankful we sent you here." her father said when her sobbing had subsided. He moved to place a hand around her shoulder to pull her in for a hug.

The feeling of her father embracing her made her feel somewhat less alone, and also, as though she was a little girl once again, but the thought of not getting to experience this feeling any time soon made her sniffling change into actual sobbing within a time span of not more than five seconds.

"I'm so sorry, daddy."

"You’re stronger than you think, Addison. We hope this place will teach you that," the Captain said as he gave her pale cheek a bit of a pinch that made her feel like she was four years old again. Her father would do that to her to step up and go to school during those first few weeks when she had been afraid of the other children in her kindergarten class.

To be completely honest, right now, she felt similar to how her four year old self must have felt; abandoned and sent away by her parents to a place where she was going to be all alone in a multitude of people whom she didn’t know, didn’t want to know, and most of all, where she was going to be submitted to the authority of others who were going to decide what she could and could not do.

The only difference was that the four year old version of herself begrudgingly and anxiously being sent off to school had the advantage of being allowed to go home at three in the afternoon, while the twenty-six year old version of herself currently standing at the lobby of a 'mental institution' guised as a 'behavioural health centre' had no chances of going home again.

**X X X**

This was the one and only facility she went that didn't appoint her as the fall guy.

She remembers her first meeting post-withdrawals, Dr. Fields, the psychiatrist at the group therapy, looked up from his legal pad, quirking an eyebrow at her. “I know you’re still getting acclimated but maybe you have something to share."

“Well, I think therapy is selfish." she declared.

The guy across from her didn’t react visibly, his lips barely twitching. “Of course it is. It's people who come to talk about their problems and seeking ways to figure out how to function in their own life.”

She turned to him, stuffing her hands into her pockets. “If you think it is selfish, why are you in it?”

He blinked at her like she was stupid. “For the obvious reason — I’m selfish,” he answered simply. "And you are too."

She met his eyes with the courtesy of a glance. Sometimes eyes are able to convey things that words cannot and, in this moment, staring back towards the stranger with a fire burning in her eyes, she tried to do exactly that.

An invitation to dance.

She raised one brow and, with mouth pressed into a tight line, she brought one corner up to curve subtly. And almost-smile.

It was coy and secretive — something only shared briefly between the two of them.

“— Okay. We’ll meet up here again, this time tomorrow .” The group leader’s voice was followed by the sound of people standing and collecting themselves. They were dismissed.

She saw her chance and moved quickly from there, legs unwinding and bringing her to stand, watching as the guy whose name she did not know — did he even said what his name was? — lifts himself from his chair and moves to leave the room. Addison was quick to follow, trailing behind on quick paces.

“Hey, wait a second,” she called finally, rabid footfalls carrying her to catch up and placing herself beside him, walking in-time with his steps."So, I was gonna ask … if you wanted some company. Do you?"

She convinced him into running away with her and he did, which was tragic because he was so easy to believe every word she said. Even the beautiful lies. And she realised she was good at that; letting people hear what they want to hear.

* * *

"Miss Montgomery, open the door."

Inside, Addison wakes, if only slowly, with fingers clawing at the bed sheets and a groan tumbling off her lips. She reaches for her clock to check the time, before quickly placing it back down again.

"You know the rules — doors should not be locked." the nurse tells her from behind the door, knocking.

Throwing the covers back, she swings her legs around and off the side of the bed until her bare feet come in contact with the carpet.

“A moment.” Her voice is hoarse and tired when she calls towards the door.

Head in her hands, Addison scrambles for the small cup of medication that had been left for her on the bedside table. Normally, the night staff supervises medication, but because the pills given to her now are primarily to soothe her heaving stomach, she supposes they had simply let her rest when they’d left it.

Long limbs stretch out as she brings a hand up to scratch over her back, a yawn splitting her maw. Smoothing her hair down and out of her features, she also makes sure to check that her pyjamas are straightened as she pads over to the door and unlocks it, prying it open.

And indeed, there stands Nurse Carver - looking rather impatient on the other side.

"You know the rules, Miss Montgomery."

"Yes. Yes, I do," she nodded, "Old habits, I guess." she shrugged, scratching her nose. "Sorry."

Once the door is opened enough, Nurse Carver cranes her jaw to peer inside the room — just a quick glance. When she observes that there's nothing suspicious going on, she passes her a bottle of water. "Drink all the water you can." she said.

For lack of anything better to do, she drinks most of the bottle over the following two minutes, only a small amount remaining. The nurse looks somewhat surprised when she sees it, but made no comment.

"You know the drill." the nurse says, and Addison does as she lead the nurse to follow her to the bathroom for a drug test.

For the first time, she isn't worried. She realises that drugs are more trouble than they are worth. It's easier to lose yourself in drugs than it is to cope with life.

"Do you really have to watch me pee every time?"

The nurse responds with an indistinct noise.

 _Yes_.

Shortly thereafter she handed the sample cup back.

Nurse Carver walks back towards the door. But before she exists into the hallway, she turns around, "Its a beautiful day, Miss Montgomery, you should go outside."

Addison smiles, looking out the window. "Yeah, it's beautiful," she agrees, "I like being alone, though."

She likes to be alone. In fact, she often finds herself needing her space. However, she also finds herself drowning very quickly in her own thoughts when left to her own devices. And so, it is this very confusion, this cycle that kept her on the path of self-destruction. A yearning for clarity and for a method to her own madness.

“But silence can be loud … in its own way.”

She remembers when it was just silence in her life. Alone. The loud white noises when once upon a time, she had felt an absence. She suppose the absence is still there; she just has to fill it up with something she can't — the three "S"s: shoot, snort, and smoke.

“Silence is indeed very loud.”

**X X X**

The next day, she leaves her room to eat and to sit alone in the warmth of the courtyard.

Other people had occupied the space as well, though not so many as usual due to it being the weekend. They all either talked amongst themselves, or lounged with a book in their lap.

Peaceful.

 _Almost_.

She hopes to make a phone later tonight. And she also hopes everyone had stopped being mad at her, hating her.

She hates herself, too. Hates to think of the shitty things she used to do, the lives she ruined, taken.

It had taken everything in her power to not go directly back to her own room, pack her things and run.

_Again?_

She knows that it’s all a battle of willpower. She knows that she’d checked herself back into this place to begin with so that she could win this battle out against herself. Giving into her demons would mean yet another failure on her end in the effort to get better, but the desire in her belly that continues to grow is one that’s almost impossible to ignore.


	5. Snow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Past: Addison’s relationship with Derek deteriorates and Derek’s suspicious of her endeavours. Addison and Dean makes an almost confession.

_"You're the bait once you're hooked"_

* * *

Her dalliance quickly became a full blown habit.

Where she once resented being alone, she was now grateful for the time she had on her own. If she was alone there would be no one to catch on and she could be high in peace. The routine and rush of it all were just as addicting.

For hour swaths of time she was numb, literally — her nose and throat from the drip — her mind focused from its normal breakneck speed. She had paid careful mind to when she thought Derek would be around, at first, but as she fell deeper into the drugs she began to care less and less about being caught.

When she was high nothing seemed to matter much, really.

After hours of looming sleepiness Addison had given in again. She slept as soundly as she could, strewn on the sofa, waking to the first light of the morning shining in through the windows. Stretching and blinking, she looked down at the table, still dazed from the drugs. Her eyes were scanning the room to help break her out of dreams and back into reality.

She had come back home from partying with Dean until pretty late last night — or early morning, however you want to see it. And the splitting headache she had told her that she either needed more drugs or sleep _(not just the two hours every other day or none at all)_ or both.

Looking down at the table, she saw that she had gone through nearly half of the fresh pack of cigarettes last night and that the little box that held her paraphernalia was out as well. Suddenly in that instant she was glad that Derek hadn't dropped by because sometimes he'd come by and climb into bed with her and that right now, in her current predicament, would be a nightmare.

After several long minutes, she forced herself from the sofa and began to hide the evidence from her venture last night and throwing the windows open to attempt to air out the distinct scent of Lucky Strike Green. She liked menthol cigarettes better. Looking at the clock, she saw that she had about nine hours before she had to be at the hospital and barely thirty minutes in, she was already getting restless and bored. But she didn't want to hit the drugs just yet. So, she looked around the apartment for something to occupy her — study, she thought to herself.

That was exactly what she did after a quick shower.

To the naked eye, she might look like an upstanding citizen, perhaps a bit overworked due the slight suggestion of bags under her eyes but she certainly did not look like an addict. Sure, she was a little on the skinny side but that was what a real woman should look like, according to societal's standards. And besides, she wasn't an addict. She could stop whenever she want to, but _why would she want to?_

As she read and flipped through pages, she was jittery and apprehensive of her control and self-preservation. She seemed to be lacking as of late because now, all she could think about was going to her dealer. But that just seemed to make everything worse, more maddening as things fester, rot into her mind and make her hungry for even more.

_Want. Need. It. Now._

Slamming her books close and pushing away from her desk, she considered the day she had ahead of her. _Hospital. Hospital. Hospital_. But she should study. Really should since it was almost finals and she had the time now. About eight more hours of time. However, before she had even realised what she was doing she was phoning her dealer _(he always said to call first)_ and was up and walking out the door.

Having the desire to slow her brain enough to stop the grinding she felt inside of it, Addison was going to speed-ball her way through this already horrible day. **Snow** helped days go by so quickly and she knew they would not fail her even when all else did.

Driving down to New Jersey was a breeze. It seemed just two minutes ago she was walking out of her door and now, she was knocking at his.

He welcomed her in. They slammed back some drinks, did some Snow, played some music, joked around and had a few other people over. He nicknamed her "Hollywood" because of her appetite for massive lines. She always had to be proving herself to others, she noticed.

_Even for this?_

Addison was nothing short of overjoyed when she had the drugs in hand, tucking them away carefully before heading back to the apartment. On the way, she stopped at a corner store and bought a fresh pack of cigarettes, some Red Bull and a prepackaged pastry with an obnoxiously optimistic looking red-headed girl on it.

Snow always made her crave sweets even as it helped suppress her appetite for food that might hold some actual nutritional value.

After she had what she wanted she headed back to her apartment with that fear of getting pulled over by the police at the back of her mind. It was always there, every single time she went and bought.

Maybe taking a cab would be a better idea.

Soon she was at her building and she headed inside, where she was greeted by the less than amused look from her fiancé and the rather pungent scent of aerosol spray.

“You think that smells better than tobacco?” Addison asked with clear distaste in her tone.

She was grunting internally, wasn't too pleased to see him since her plans of getting high was ruined now. And she didn't want to blame him but someone had to take it.

"Yeah. Yeah I do. Probably gonna get cancer from them both. Might as well smell like a garden." Derek said sarcastically, "Your apartment stinks, by the way. I thought you quit."

Rolling her eyes, "Clearly I didn't."

Of course it stunk. She should have had the windows opened but she was far too lethargic to care. But still, smelling smoke didn’t mean too much, it should be expected at this point.

Derek scoffed as he picked up the empty pack of cigarettes from the trash. "Lucky Strikes? Seriously?"

"My grandmother used to smoke them — actually, no, she still does and she's fine. She just got a clean bill of health."

"That woman should be in a museum," he said under his breath. His voice rang of exasperation. He knew it was pointless to reason with her; she would not listen to him. She had a counter for everything he had to say. "Where were you off so early anyway?"

Addison hesitated for only a moment as she sized up the expression on Derek's face. Suspicion, clearly but also concern?

“Went out for some coffee.” she lied cooly.

"You have coffee in the apartment," Derek looked at her, puzzled. Shit. "And where is it, then?"

"Drank it." she kept her answers short, only lies had details. "I was studying. Needed some fresh air. So, I went out."

That much had been true at the very least. She was suddenly very aware of the fact that she was hiding drugs on her person.

Did Derek have any idea that she might have gone out to get them?

No, he wouldn’t be so passive with his suspicions.

He'd be sputtering all over her apartment, flipping out.

No, he didn't know anything.

Still it was unsettling knowing that she might be discovered by her fiancé. She was going to have to hide them well at any rate, just in case. The whole potentially getting caught thing was a headache she would rather not deal with at all.

"Alright," he said, turning that frown into a smile, exhaling, "Why'd you wake up so early?" he walked over to her, wrapping his arms around her waist and she reciprocated with her arms around his neck.

She gulped, finally locking eyes with Derek's bright blue ones. They haven't been ... affectionate, per say, with each other in over a month, since the proposal actually, and it was all her. Mostly because she didn't want to look him in the eyes.

He didn't deserve being cheated on. And especially not on the day of their anniversary. And not with the waiter who was serving them.

His features were gentle — loving and if she looked at them close enough and squint, she could probably see Dean, too — and suddenly she wanted nothing more but to cling to his neck and never let him go.

_Whose?_

"Couldn't sleep?"

"Well, I couldn't go back to sleep."

"Maybe I could help." he stated and kissed her as if he was trying to make up for all the time they’ve spent apart. And it was good. Great, even. Sweet as candy. She had forgotten just how much she loved being kissed by him.

When they pulled away, he had that same puzzled look he had earlier. "You taste like alcohol."

"What?" she asked, vexed, "The coffee was Irish." she lied again, pushing him away with an exasperated chuckle. "What's with the third degree? The questions? I-I don't understand." she stammered, almost shouting, so absolutely irritated now.

The drugs or rather, the lack of it, might have been a contributing factor, too. "I have nothing to tell you. I don't owe you an explanation just because. I don't have to tell you anything. My whereabouts, what I ate and drank, what I did and didn't do — but since you must know, let me tell you what's been happening so far —"

"Addison, Addison," he said calmly, putting his hands up in surrender. She was like a rubber band that was pulled too tight and was about to snap. "You owe me the truth because I’m your fiancé but you're blowing this out of proportion."

"You're the one with the stupid questions."

"I just asked you a simple question."

"And I gave you an answer." she said as a matter of factly.

"Okay," he nodded, "You did and I accept your answer."

"I wasn't looking for your acceptance, Derek!" she shouted all in one breath, throwing her hands up as she grunted. If the neighbours weren't awake before, they sure were now.

At that, he paused and just looked at her, reading, studying her as she stood there, rocking back and forth on her heels, her heart jackhammering in her chest. Her ragged breathing was the only sound between them and the fears of him finding out or her blurting it out intensified tenfold. But then, he shook his head, resigned. "It's too early for this. I'm leaving."

"Fine," she quickly walked three steps to the door, twisting the knob and flinging the door open, "Go." she said.

A neighbour right across from her had opened her door at the very same moment but quick closed it when she saw them heated.

"Go. I'm not kidding."

"Addison."

"You wanted to leave. So, leave."

They didn't talk for three weeks straight and when they finally did their relationship wasn't the same.

* * *

Addison woke to the soft, wispy sound of gentle snoring. It wasn't a slow waking; it was abrupt and shocking, as though cold water had been thrown on her. She threw her arm over her eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath, before she quietly climbed out of bed.

Derek didn't snore, she remembered.

_Derek. Her fiancé. Derek._

She stood there looking at the rumpled bedsheets, the pile of jeans and jackets and t-shirts and all thoughts rationale for doing this every night for two weeks in a row on the floor. But it had been such a long time since she'd awakened with someone next to her. Derek had hardly come over — she hadn't seen him in four days — and due to their busy schedules, they hadn't made any plans in moving in yet.

_Or maybe she was just pushing him away?_

Addison walked to the bathroom, rubbing her hands over her face. She still felt very tired, they had spent all night at clubs, and could easily have done with a few more hours of sleep. She looked at herself in the mirror the way she always did now, always checking to see if her nose would grow any longer like the liar she was, always wondering if her indiscretions were written on her face with permanent marker, always waiting for the moment when the teacup breaks.

If she hadn't been paranoid before, she was plenty paranoid now.

_Or maybe it was just guilt? Lies? Drugs? The fairytales of her whereabouts she would tell Derek?_

But she couldn't afford to mess this up. She needed this because for a moment or two, she could breathe and be someone else, someone different, someone unbounded to societal pressures and someone who'd make a series of mistakes and not get reprimanded for it. So, nothing else mattered. Not anymore. Not when she was at her safe haven. She ignored the voice that whispered a constant refrain in her mind ... clear through to her soul.

 _If only ..._ it whispered. _If only you could turn back the clock. If only things were different. If only you weren't cheating on your fiancé ... If only ... if you only ..._

NO. Don't think about that. About Derek. Don't think too much. It hurt too much.

She walked back out of the bathroom, casting a quick glance at the only part of Dean she could see — dark hair peeking out from under the top of the sheets, four fingers of the right hand curled over the edge of the pillow — and went downstairs to the kitchen.

These days there was no telling who was watching them, how much they knew, or what they'd do with the information if they had it.

_Or maybe they'd send them to Derek?_

NO. Addison wasn't paranoid; she was only a realist. She had to cover all grounds, so she could be prepared for the worst case scenario, when Derek began to hate her.

The sound of the coffee grinder seemed loud enough to wake the dead. She poured water in the pot and set it to go. The rituals and habits of everyday life had taken on a new significance to her now. She'd made coffee nearly every day of her adult life, but now she listened to the sound of the beans grinding, inhaled the earthy, dark aroma. No matter how significant or mundane, each individual action had its own value, one previously undiscovered.

Briefly, Addison stopped, considering whether she should go back and see if Dean was awake. But she decided against it, since she wasn't quite ready yet to talk, to have a conversation this early in the morning.

_Why would she keep doing this? Was she that unhappy in her relationship with Derek? Was Dean just making her more happy?_

Not that Derek wasn't.

Maybe there was just something terribly wrong with her and she could never be happy nor satisfied.

But Dean was. He really was.

_He smiled. "Hello, Adrianne." He opened his eyes and she was standing by the bed, red hair spilling over one shoulder. "You're beautiful."_

_She rolled her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest. "You're intoxicated."_

_"I am high," he corrected. If he thinks there was some sort of distinction in the two, then he couldn't be that high. "And you are beautiful. I've always thought so."_

_She sat beside him on the bed, tilting her chin up as she tucked a lock of hair behind one ear. "You could've let me know."_

_"I'm letting you know now." He loses language for a moment. "Addison Adrianne," he said as though it were a proposal, "would you like to get high with me?"_

_"Sure."_

_He pulled her to him._

_"I know you won't say it but I really like you."_

_She just gave him a look. He shivered as her icy fingers trail under his jaw and down his throat. "This is new," she said, finding a half-healed scar along his collarbone._

_"Shrapnel."_

_"Are you ever going to tell me what kind of business you're in?"_

_"No."_

_She quirked an eyebrow. "It's illegal. I know that much."_

_"I'm neither confirming nor denying."_

_She shook her head at him. "Do you even try to dodge anymore?"_

_"I try. I'm just ... not very good at it."_

Not that being with either men had been simple. On the contrary. As fleeting as those moments were with Dean, each had been weighted with complications.

But with Derek, from the instant she'd met him, all slouchy insolence and brilliant wit, quiet confidence and tremulous doubt, she'd been unable to look away; and Addison wondered sometimes, as the years passed, if she'd been unable to look away because she was looking into her doom.

Her future.

They'll get married and lead uneventful lives. They'll both be unhappy while silently resenting each other for what they've become and for their marriage.

She could be called weak for saying this, for saying something a lot of people would feel ashamed of saying aloud and for saying something that could make her seem like a hopelessly, lonely and afraid little girl, but it was the truth, no one had made her feel the way Dean did.

It’d never felt that whole, like it did when she was in his presence. She felt alive and warm and real in these waking moments with him. He made her feel beautiful, bright and shiny and cared for and just that fucking amazing. And when he wasn't around, she'd feel this void in her body.

That was why she always ended up here.

In his apartment.

Almost everyday for the past month.

She'd made excuses. She'd spill lies left and right, ridiculousness ones, like Bizzy was feeling ill and that she needed to be in Connecticut with her mother for the entire weekend. And Derek had never suspected a thing or confirmed her lie.

She needed this to stay how they were. Needed Dean.

And because in the heat of those moments with him, she had forgotten herself, had found herself staring at Dean over drinks and rows of powdered lines and then suddenly, without noticing the lost time in between, found herself in his apartment. Everything with him moved in the blink of an eye and she was not in control — one instant she could hear herself begging him for more, in the next she heard him pleading for the same. They were on the bed, they were on the floor, they were on the table or on the chair. They lay in bed discussing anything, or argued over nothing while eating. To Addison, the nights they had together had embodied the word adventure. Their raw sexual hunger was counterpointed perfectly by tender, intense conversations, all the more rare because she hardly ever talked like that, and Dean claimed few people wished to listen to him.

And then at the end, as the heat and madness had evaporated, telling Dean that it had all been fun, but that she was taken. If the passion of every night spent had muddled her sense of time, that particularly unfortunate moment was petrified in her heart. Dean standing there precariously balanced on one leg, the other halfway in his trousers, shirt unbuttoned, tie draped over his shoulders. Mouthing the word 'fiancé' as though it were in a language he was unfamiliar with. Of all the things she'd done and said, that callous ambush was the thing she regretted most.

She'd never told him how she felt and she probably never will.

Coffee done, musings done, she poured two cups and was just about to pick them up when she felt Dean's presence behind her. Addison didn't turn, instead stiffened her spine as though that would ward Dean off. Clearly unimpressed by her remoteness, Dean pressed his body against hers, snaking his hand along her stomach and then sneaking down into her jeans.

“Why aren’t you naked? That’s the only thing I’m gonna complain about.” he mumbled in her ear, kissing the shell and sucking a mark right where her jaw started, making her shiver all the way down to her toes.

She let Dean move his hand down, didn't stop him when his tongue slid around the edge of her ear.

"The best part of waking up ..." Dean said facetiously, against her ear.

Finally, she pushed away from him, turned, and handed Dean one of the cups. Dean, obviously feeling quite comfortable, opened the refrigerator, pulled out milk, then dumped in enough to turn the coffee utterly beige, followed closely by what looked like about one quarter cup of sugar.

"Some coffee with your sugar?" Addison asked.

Dean sipped it, grinning at her over the lip of the cup. He hopped up on the counter and stared intently at her.

She only leaned against the refrigerator, looking back at him, feeling the vibrating hum along her back.

Finally she broke the silence. "I like the view." she said, gesturing towards the window with her chin where it showcased New York City's night skyline.

"You're my best view."

She narrowed her eyes at him, chuckling and shaking her head. She couldn't believe he had just said that to her. "Stop." she said as she kicked lightly at his shin with her foot.

"What?" he asked in mock innocence.

"You're so cheesy."

"And you love it."

Scoffing, "No, I don't." she said.

"Yes, you do. You -"

"Any bagels?" she interrupted him, changing the subject.

"You think this is a short order place or something?"

"I got what I ordered last night," she said.

"Service is our goal."

"And then some." He laughed out loud, a sound Addison hadn't heard before ... she did that. She made him laugh.

"Did you think we weren't going to talk about it? This?"

Well, she guess it was a matter of time. It had been over a month now since they started this regularly.

Addison grimaced. "I-I ... was kind of hoping we wouldn't have to, yeah."

Dean seemed to consider this for a while, staring out the window, before turning his attention back to her. "You come over almost every night this past month. We hang out. I teach you a few tricks. I show you a good time." he said. Whatever she thought she knew about drug use, it was nothing compared to him. He introduced her to GHB and taught her how to do Snow in ways she would never have imagined.

And yeah, what they had was nothing short of a good time.

"And when you don't come over, you're all I think about. I miss you. So, I can't let you off the hook on this one, Adrianne. You stung me the last time, and I didn't see you for another three months. So, I'm not letting you get away again. I've been waiting quite a while."

"But I can't do this anymore, Dean. I have a fiancé. I shouldn't keep doing this to him." Addison put her cup in the sink and walked out of the kitchen. The idea of talking about what they've been doing made her stomach muscles clench. But hadn't she known it would happen sooner or later, the moment she lost herself in Dean's smile?

From behind her, she heard Dean, padding after her. "Now this is familiar."

She had to break it off with Dean because it was the right thing to do. It had gone on long enough.

Walking straight and turning right for the bedroom, and there Dean was, right behind her. Addison pulled her t-shirt from where it was laying now on the bed, Dean must have picked them up, jacket, socks, then went to the bathroom.

"Nuh-uh," Dean said, stepping in front of her. He pushed against her shoulders with his flat palm, kept pushing until she sat back on the bed.

"Dean."

Addison was staggered suddenly by memories of the night of Derek's proposal, of Dean's relentless insistence that it was more than a cheap fling. Of her own overpowering desire to caress his lip with her thumb even while Dean railed against her, her voice high-pitched and grating.

Plopping down on the bed next to her, Dean sighed heavily. "You know, for a girl, you sure don't like to talk about feelings and emotions."

"I'm a WASP. I was not raised to confront, cry or be honest. And for a guy, you get gold for pushy annoyance."

"I'm a practical man, Adrianne. People think I'm somewhat capricious. But at heart I'm practical. I realise when I can change things, and when I can't. You, I can change." His voice suddenly turned dark. "Everything pivoted last night. Turned upside down. You can't shove me away this time."

"I wasn't ... shoving you, Dean." she sighed almost frustratingly.

Perhaps it'd be impossible to forget about Dean. She'd be left with a hole, an emptiness inside of her. Perhaps she should forget about his existence. Never come back. Never turn around. Let him leave her system. Perhaps she ought to stop pushing him away and accept what was.

He pulled her to him and she stiffened, didn't relax herself around him. She was cold, she was always cold, but of course she would be. Heaven's cold, and she was their angel.

"Tell me you want to."

It was a statement to what she had said earlier, that she couldn't keep doing this.

"Dean."

"Tell me you want to even though you can't." he insisted again, like a stubborn child insisting on having his own way.

"I can't, Dean," she said, her voice blunt but not unkind. "But I want to ... I guess we should make the best of our time, shouldn't we?"

"I like you, Adrianne. I think I could love you."

She clicked her tongue at him, as if that was the saddest thing she'd ever heard.

"That's just what every girl wants to hear."

"I think that came out wrong. What I meant was I think I'm falling for you. I haven't felt this way about anyone since Stella."

She rolled up his sleeve and traced the line of bruises dotting his inner arm. "You said you were going to stop this."

Said the hypocrite who's been snorting hers.

Dean thought it was probably pitiful how much he liked her scolding him. "It feels better with the needle," he protested weakly, knowing he'd been caught.

"You're going to get an infection." she scraped her nails lightly over the bruised skin and his eyelids fluttered "Promise you'll stop. No more needles. It's too scary."

"But ..."

"Dean."

His breath caught.

"Promise me."

He nodded yes. Anything for her.

Her lips curled up at her victory. She began to open his shirt, shaking her head at his collection of bruises. "Is this a boot?" she said, sighing at him. "Dean, learn to dodge." she traced around the borders of another bruise, this one further up on his sternum.

"How did I not notice these?"

"You were too high to notice anything."

He closed his eyes and felt his body relax as she continued the careful examination, her fingers finding each of his tiny punctures and bruises, the cool touch a balm. Dean slid one hand up her back, lightly tracing his fingers down her spine, and the sigh of pleasure that drew out was better than any drug he'd tried.

She began to ease him out of his clothes; he felt her lips close over his collarbone and his whole body arched up, his breath stuttering in his chest. He leaned up on his elbows and found her lips with his own; her lips part and she was the one who deepened the kiss, wet and slow and he could do this forever if she'd let him.

"Wanna get high again?" he whispered when the kiss finally broke.

"Sure," she said, her tongue running along the edge of his lip as she curled his hair around her fingers.

"Be careful, though, it has a hell of a kick. You'll see heaven on this stuff."

Then, the makeshift straw out of a dollar bill they'd used earlier was against her nostril and she snorted the entire line in one go.

She straightened up, nostrils starting to burn as she sniffed the final bits of powder up, heart racing in anticipation. She could feel the Snow hitting her blood stream, travelling to her brain. She could probably name all of the things happening in her body right now, but the beautiful thing was with each passing second, it became less and less important to do so. The focus of her thoughts began to tighten, to contract. As she sat there, she could feel herself swelling anew, like diamonds, shiny and new and so fucking unbreakable.

Dean’s eyes were beautiful and they seemed bigger than possible because of how large her pupils were. He turned onto his side to watch her. His pupils were dilated, she noticed — the drugs, arousal, maybe both.

She sniffed once more, her nasal canal tingling.

Dean hadn't been wrong about seeing heaven, though. Not wrong at all.

When there was finally nothing but skin between them, he wrapped his arms around her, the clinging chill of her skin made him shiver as he held her. He wanted to make her warm. He would give his life gladly if it would make her warm.

He traced one thumb over her cheekbone, memorising the contours of her face, then cradled her head as he kissed her again, his tongue running over hers and tracing along the inside of her lips. She made a soft little hum of pleasure that went directly to his groin, the steady pressure building there; he moved against her, trying to relieve some of the tension and she laughs.

She scraped her teeth very lightly against the side of his neck and he felt that down to his spine.

"Do you like it?"

He moaned and turned his head to the side, shivering as she nipped and sucked the delicate skin along his neck, her fingers twining through his hair and trailing over his lips. He rocked his hips, urging her on and she bit harder, hard enough that he knew he'll have a new bruise there by morning. "Don't stop that," he whispered, clenching one hand in her hair. "Please don't."

He felt her smile. She worked her way down his body, teeth and tongue and lips teasing and sucking and biting until all he could do was writhe and beg, across his collarbone, down his chest, the edge of her teeth closing just hard enough on his nipple to make his eyes roll back. Addison scraped her nails down his ribs and his whole body arches.

They fell together, their bodies suddenly still except for the deep throbbing where they were linked. As breath and clear thought returned, she began to laugh.

He was holding her tight against him, his heart a jackhammer in his chest. Her breathing was ragged against his cheek as they lie there for several long perfect minutes, their limbs entwined and sweat drying on their skin.

She roused first, her head tilted to the side as she brushed his hair out of his face. "Do you want me to say it?"

He shivered. "Yes," he whispered, tracing circles on her skin.

Her eyes were wide and sad as she watched him. She kissed his cheek, then the delicate skin just below his ear before she spoke. "I think I could love you too."

/

**_Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy. We're back to Addison's early drugging days._ **

**_Does anyone know where the "I like the view." "You're my best view." lines are from? Let me know if you do. Haha! Anyway please leave a review and let me know what you think of this chapter._ **


	6. Coke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Past: Addison tries to prove a point to Dean. Meanwhile, Derek is onto her. Will she be able to lie her way out this time?

_"Drugs end all dream"_

* * *

Life was like a funhouse mirror at times, all distorted and wrong but delightfully fun. Because as it turns out, in order to feel less guilty, one ought to take more drugs. It was the only way. And the more she took them - yes, the more shittier she felt, but also, the less guilt ate her up whenever she looked at Derek.

Addison had spent every single night of the last two weeks out, drinking, dancing, snorting lines of varying substances off of strangers who were just as fucked up as her at the time and coming up with excuses as to why she couldn't see her fiancé.

_I've still got a lot of things to do. Can't come over tonight. Goodnight, Honey._

_No, don't come over. Dr. Stabler let me stay for the Lieberman case. I know I miss you too._

_Savvy came over. Yeah, she's staying the night. We will. You know it. I love you too._

She tried her damn best to be such a mess so she wouldn't think about Derek at all anymore, which seemed nonsensical to a layperson, but the pain she felt was deep and overwhelming. The guilt she felt wasn't even numbing the pain to a bearable level that she could withstand and that always _always_ led her right to Dean's doorstep every night.

That was when she saw the problem - actually, she realised she was the problem.

_Why was she always so inclined to sabotage all the good in her life?_

And so, she decided.

At first, it was just good sense. To stop all that she was doing because it was the right thing to do. Also, Coke was going to ruin her relationship with Derek and Coke didn't care who gets hurt in the process.

Because they've been tiptoeing around each other for the past week and a half. Something so trivial and minute could somehow turn into a full blown argument about nothing and everything in between. She even, once or twice, got physical with him _(it was the drugs, not her)_ and he always stormed out so he wouldn't get physical with her.

It was not right, she knew that. It was what it had become. But if he were to call her, she'd come running and if she ever called, she knew Derek wouldn't hesitate to be at her side without a single thought to ignoring her.

But this, it was just pure determination to prove to Dean that she could stop, that she didn't have a problem. She could stay sober even if she didn't want to or need to. She hadn't been sober since she started, which was over five months ago, now.

_"I'm fine. It's not a problem. I can stop anytime I want." her voice had been a bit monotone as she spoke out the clichés, not bothering to even try and fool herself._

_"Then, stop." he challenged._

_"Fine. I will. And I'll prove to you that it's not a problem for me. Not like it is for you."_

Since she'd been going out a lot lately, she hadn't been showing up at the hospital and to the point where Derek got wind of it and he came banging on her door one day when she was so terribly high off both weed and Coke.

While she had seen Dean prepare it this way plenty of times before, it had been her first. Smoking Coke was not something she had given much thought before since it had too much added steps, and frankly, she was a little afraid of accidentally overdosing. But on the plus side, it resulted in a different kind of experience entirely because smoke penetrates the system almost immediately and right then and there she was rocketing from that very high.

She had been a vibrant buzzing ball of energy for a good fifteen minutes before it began to become a bit too much and she decided that she needed to come down or at least even everything out. She stood up and went to her window, turning a fan on to suction the smoke from the room before lighting the joint and taking a deep, full inhale. It was harsh, harsher than cigarettes because it was unfiltered and she had to stifle herself from creating a cacophony as she choked and sputtered on the first hit.

Mixing uppers and downers was inadvisable to say the least but Addison was certain she knew what she was doing. Still, even the most _brilliant_ of minds could make a miscalculation and once she had snuffed it out within the hour she realised that she had definitely miscalculated.

Sometimes she just couldn't make an effort to remember that she never reacted well to weed. And so her gut wrenched and she reached for the freshly emptied garbage bin, retching into it. Awful, bitter bile flooded up her throat. She began to dry heave and she grabbed for a bottle of water, chugged it to get the taste of bile out from her mouth.

So, mixing Coke and weed was not for her, she concluded. It had been too much and she was almost in a panic but she had decided it wasn't going to be enough to kill her, so there was no need to turn herself in by calling an ambulance. She most definitely felt sick, though. Pushing the bin away from herself and curling up on the couch, staying just by the edge so that if she was sick again she would not run the risk of drowning. She closed her eyes to try to block out the sensation of spinning. This was just a minor setback, she told herself, she would just have to be more careful next time.

Addison had felt heavy, fighting fustily to remain conscious. She had been drifting off only to be startled awake by a thunderous knock on her door. Darting upright and lunging for the little black box which held her 'supplies', she tossed them under the sofa.

"Who is it?" she groaned towards the door.

"Addison … Addie, it's me. Open the door." Derek's voice answered.

She could only hope enough time had passed for the smell of marijuana to dissipate. She opened the door and Derek stepped inside and looked around the apartment which Addison was suddenly very grateful that she had tidied. "You've not been to the hospital lately. They told me." Derek said, looking at his fiancée who was apparently still in pyjamas in the middle of the day.

"I wasn't feeling very well, Derek." Addison shrugged lazily.

"Are you sure it's not something more?" Derek asked curiously as if he knew something.

Addison dismissed that idea, Derek couldn't know. He couldn't know because he didn't see the obvious signs in front of him as per usual. "I'm positive."

"Look, I don't know exactly how stupid you think I am, Addison, but something is _wrong_ with you and I know it." he went from concerned to angry rather quickly.

"Nothing is wrong with me and I'm sorry that you doubt your own intelligence so much, Derek." Addison replied coolly.

Derek looked like rage was boiling inside of him. "Addison, I can smell the weed and you look like you're high as a fucking kite."

"Perhaps Mrs. Bingham from upstairs is up to her herbals again." she dismissed his suspicions.

"No, it smells like fucking weed right here in this apartment. And you don't deny being high." Derek quickly responded.

She fell back against the couch. "Derek, honestly I have nothing to tell you. I don't owe you an explanation just because you came barging into my apartment."

"You can't keep using that as an excuse. I care about you, Addison. Your future. Our future." Addison just continued to stare up at the ceiling which just further infuriated him. "What's the matter with you? It's your career we're talking about here? Why aren't you concerned? You're gonna repeat unless you do something. You need to speak with the Dean or the academic advisor to discuss your options. Maybe you could make up for the hours in the summer - I don't know."

It was in the handbook, he thought to himself. It clearly states that if they were to miss too many hours, they may not be able accumulate the number of hours required for them to graduate.

"Stop worrying too much, Derek. They're not gonna notice."

"Are you not listening to me? Gosh, you're intolerable when you're high, you know that?" he spat, vexed as he sat down next to her, "I bumped into Annie this morning, she said she hasn't seen you in two weeks. So, I'm pretty sure someone's noticed, Addison." he said sarcastically to which she just rolled her eyes.

"Who cares about that bitch. I'm talking about Terence," he was their medical student coordinator, "He hasn't called. No one but you have been knocking on my door. Nobody cares, darling." she said, turning to him and patting him on the cheek.

"Oh." he frowned.

Well, he supports if the school knew she had been absent, they would have probably taken action by now.

"Just relax. Gosh." she laughed in disbelief for how he had just almost completely lost it just then, and the one-eighty of his emotions.

Derek let out a heaving breath. "I'm sorry. I was worried for you."

"I know. I know and I love you for it. But if something were to happen, the Captain will just donate a hall or a pool or something and I'll be off the hook."

"Right." he said under his breath. The advantages of being obscenely rich - you can buy your way out of just about anything.

"But that doesn't explain what you've been doing for the past two weeks."

With her so out of it, she couldn't even come up with a good enough lie and just mumbled her way through an explanation.

_Sick. Archer. Weed._

He didn't ask any more questions but she knew he called bullshit.

* * *

That was three days ago.

Three days of Derek staying over, hovering, and watching her every movement. Three days of her being held as prisoner in her own home - well, basically - and three long days of not seeing Dean, who have been blowing up her telephone with missed calls and voice messages. And if he knew where she lived he'd already have broken down the door.

She'd see this through, though - that she, with a drug problem was a long shot.

She had been having a pretty uneventful couple of days in the hospital; it was psychiatry, after all, which by far, out of all the rotations, was the shortest one. Just from eight in the morning to three in the afternoon and no on-calls.

Generally, she preferred the ones with longer hours, even though it meant more standing and waiting around and patient rounds. Maybe it was just the Coke that had made it all delightfully pleasant. It sure made time go a lot faster and made everything seem bright and brilliant.

But now, seven hours went by like seven days without Coke. And when she went back home, she couldn't do anything but mope and lie around. She tried studying, though nothing was sticking. She read. She drank. She watched TV and went shopping for more clothes, purses and shoes that she knew would just end up unused and in her closet.

It was like without drugs her brain couldn't function anymore. She didn't know what to do with her time, didn't know how she did it before, she couldn't figure out how to keep herself entertained so she wouldn't have the thoughts and the cravings, to distract herself from temptation.

She wanted to sleep but she also didn't want to succumb to human weakness, cave to the demands of her pathetic husk of flesh and bones. Not enough nicotine in the world could keep her alert at this point, and she'd become so tolerant to caffeine over the years the chemical might as well be inert.

She didn't tell her fiancé the truth. Things were tense and mostly silent between the two of them. Derek didn't so much as glance in her direction if he could help it. If this was how he had reacted with just weed, imagine if she told him about Coke and GHB and Dean. The truth would only get him more upset and she didn't feel like dealing with his disapproval so soon.

She had only been drug free for about thirty hours before a glance at the fireplace - at her second secret supply hidden behind the brickwork - made her pause to consider her options. The impulse blossoming through her mind was an absolutely terrible idea, she knew that all too well. She shouldn't even be thinking about it. She made a promise to herself. But then again ... she would be able to get things done a lot faster.

_And that was the ultimate point, wasn't it?_

Her days at the hospital would go a lot faster, she'd get things done quickly and efficiently and no one else would have to suffer, including herself, she reasoned. And not only that, she would be able to concentrate on studying again.

Made perfect sense, really.

And besides, she reminded herself as she dug out the old, familiar black case containing a packet of powder and a straw ... it'd only be the one time.

But then, it became twice and thrice and the next thing she knew she was making up for the two and a half days, the thirty hours, she was drug-free.

She had relapsed and it was okay, it was fine - yeah, it was all part of the journey.

Tomorrow was a new day. Tomorrow, she'd be clean again. For good, this time. But tomorrow had other plans for her. She had gotten too close to a schizo and he bit her arm and she had to have two tetanus shots and - _ohmygod_ , she almost died.

_Could you not see? You only live once, right?_

By her dozenth 'only the one time' excuse _(necessary, now, as she couldn't afford to let herself crash in the middle of work)_ she'd begun to accept the fact that she had made a rather poor decision. But even then, the thought didn't really bother her, it was just so much easier this way. Everything calm, thoughts falling in perfect logical symmetry and the world muted to such a comfortable level of stillness around her. It was enough to make her wonder why she ever wanted to quit in the first place.

She told herself she needed the drug just until they transferred the schizo to a proper mental facility or else she'd be riddled with anxiety every time she went to the hospital.

A week had gone by, the schizo had already been transferred, the impetus for keeping herself buzzed erased. Now, she had no excuse for not letting the drugs wear off. She was not some pathetic junkie, so she did as she rightly should and dutifully put everything away with nary a twinge of apprehension for what she knew would happen next.

Withdrawal, of course, but it couldn't be so bad. She'd been through it and she always came out alright in the end _(that was because she always succumbed to the cravings.)_ ... it'll be fine.

Soon enough she was snapping at Derek through a vicious migraine, snarling at Mark and everyone else for merely talking, she resisted the urge to punch a hole through the drywall as she retreated to her bedroom to curl up under the duvet in misery. And good God, now she remembered with horrible, agonising clarity - this was why she had to quit. Because her brain felt like it was about to melt out through her ears and the entire world was clouded by a fog of exhausted, never-ending piercing torment.

Fuck Coke and fuck every single stupid neuron involved in making the idiotic decision to use again. She was never ever going back on the stuff as long as she lived.

But even as she thought that she knew it was an empty promise. She would have forgotten the pain, the haze of despondency and anger and guilt. Hell, by tomorrow morning she would be mostly back to normal, if perhaps a bit tired. Caffeine and cigarettes to wake her up. The combination of dopaminergic stimulants would erase all memory of this torture. Her legal alternatives would mute the unpleasant side-effects of harsher chemicals while at the same time strengthening, sharpening her recollection of the high.

And eventually it wouldn't seem like a bad idea anymore. Withdrawal would fade away until it was just a nebulous reminder of something unpleasant, nowhere near the level it needed to be to put her off doing it again.

The fact that she could so accurately predict her own future stupidity was, quite frankly, depressing.

Even more so when it inevitably came true.

* * *

This time there wasn't even a special circumstance at the hospital. She was just bored. Bored, bored, bored and Derek and Mark were still in their respective shifts and Derek was most possibly on call for tonight, she couldn't go to Dean's because you know, she was trying to stay faithful, and all of her friends were either busy with life or school or work to make any time for her.

_Ugh. Unfair._

Addison sat curled up in her armchair and wondered what on earth made them all think that leaving her alone in her apartment for the entire afternoon was in any way a good idea. But then she quickly reminded herself that she was an adult and she didn't need supervision.

_Maybe she could drive up to Connecticut to see her parents?_

Except she sort of didn't want to, really. It was a two hour drive and she hated driving long distances.

There was absolutely nothing at all to do. Lacking any decent distraction, she found that she'd been staring at the loose brick in the fireplace for a good twenty minutes now.

Despite her own better judgement she began to weigh the pros and cons. Withdrawal had been uncomfortable, yes, but it hadn't been that badly excruciating. And when compared with the blissful serenity she knew will come of using ... well, it was hardly much of a trade-off, now was it? She'd be focused enough to even start studying, maybe, or even tidy up the apartment because it was a mess.

Derek would appreciate the attempt regardless.

It didn't even have to be a whole dose - just a few milligrams. A tiny amount. Enough to supplement, nothing beyond that.

It occurred to her some forty minutes later that she was an absolute pushover when it came to convincing herself to not do stupid things. Those arguments had been fucking moronic. And yet despite the inanity here she was ... quite happily high, actually, so maybe she didn't mind all that much.

But she would mind. Later, when she was crashing. She knew that. Knew she'd mind quite a lot really. Then she'd be absolutely furious with herself. It was interesting how she can predict such things even now, while verging on being completely shitfaced, and how at the moment it all just seemed sort of funny. Later, it would not - she knew it wouldn't. But right now it was amusing. It was hilarious.

Chemicals did such strange things to the brain.

She chuckled to herself as she turned through the pages of her textbooks. Well, whatever. She had a good hour or so before it'd start bothering her - might as well make the best of her high while it lasted.

* * *

Another hour passed, and since the first dose really hadn't been very much she decided it'd be fine to do another hit. She was still in the middle of her studying anyway, and the growing headache had been too distracting to continue reading the tiny words anyway. Plus Derek wouldn't be home until the morning - he called some twenty minutes ago to say he definitely had night call _(a way to get them used to night shifts and was part of their education and requirements in order to graduate.)_ and he'd be delivering twins.

Well, he'd be watching the OB deliver the babies.

Addison had cheerfully told her fiancé to have a lovely evening before she left the apartment to get herself one of those chemistry setups from ToysRUs. She used to do those little experiments as a kid all the time and she loved it, especially when the Captain was there with her, pretending to be her lab assistant.

_Shit! Didn't she have work today?_

It had completely evaded her mind. Oh, wells. It was too late to do anything now. So, not all of today's calls were Dean's, then. She'd just have to call tomorrow morning.

* * *

Half a dozen iterations of just one more hour, then she'll let it wear off. It creeped by before she realised it was now past midnight and she'd managed to incrementally nudge herself into quite the impressive Coke high. The crash was going to be absolutely horrific. _Shitty_. But maybe it wouldn't be quite so bad if she instead titrated off. Halve the next dose, quarter the second ... then instead of crashing she'd come down in stages. It seemed like an excellent plan. _What a genius!_ Which truthfully doesn't mean all that much because everything seems like an excellent plan right now.

And that, she reminded herself in a tone of thought which should have been stern but which came out more like giddy amusement, was exactly how Coke worked. It made the world silly, free of all worries, consequences lose meaning until they were absolutely pathetic and nothing in the entire universe was outside her control. But still underneath it all was a tiny voice screaming through the ice - _you idiot, none of this confidence is real, it's just the chemicals! Everything is going to go to absolute shit in a few hours and it's all your fault!_

It was so easy to drown out the yelling though; so simple to just ignore it and go on with whatever she was doing. Which ... at the moment was nothing? Oh, she'd finished her experiments.

Well, she hadn't even noticed she was done. Maybe she should go for a walk then.

_Wandering the streets of New York in the middle of the night?_

Brilliant, sounds like fun.

* * *

By the time she returned to the apartment it had been well over six hours and she was exhausted. Derek was home, sitting on the armchair and pretending to read one of the magazines on the coffee table, he looked worried and relieved, Addison didn't care. The entire world had gone back to being putridly awful and she just wanted to sleep forever.

"Where did you go?" Derek asked, looking up from the magazine as Addison walked into the sitting room.

She grimaced at the sunlight filtering through the window and rubbed at her forehead, trying to ease a migraine she knew won't go away until she either slept or did another hit of Coke. Derek was here, though, rendering the second option infeasible. Which really begged the question of why she'd even bothered coming into the sitting room in the first place, as her supply was still hidden by the fireplace.

_What, had she thought Derek would fail to notice if she just walked over and removed the loose brick?_

The man was ordinary, yes, but he wasn't blind.

Derek was still staring at her expectantly, so Addison forced herself to ignore the pain in her head and responded in as casual a voice as she could manage. "I just went for a walk."

"In the middle of the night?"

His expression was somewhere between bemused and exasperated - fairly standard when interacting with her these days. Under ordinary circumstances, Addison would just shrug it off, reply with some quip about normal people and go about her business. Right now, though, she was in pain, and frustrated and tired and angry ... and she didn't want to fucking deal with Derek's stupid condescending disbelief.

_Why should it be strange that she went out for a walk at midnight?_

There was nothing odd about it.

_Stop making that damned face, you idiot._

It occurred to her belatedly that she was scowling venomously over at her fiancé. Derek was starting to look slightly concerned, like maybe he thought there was something wrong. There wasn't. Really, there wasn't. Nothing's going on at all.

 _No, everything's normal_ , Addison thought pointedly, loudly, as if hoping her message would somehow travel the empty space between them through raw willpower and then, she wouldn't have to bother trying to form the right words to put Derek off the trail.

_I haven't done anything stupid, just made a few slightly inconvenient decisions. But I can handle it, it's fine. Fine, fine, fine. I knew exactly what would happen. Oh and by the way you're sitting right in the fucking way of me getting to my secret supply and that's making me want to punch you in the face, but I won't because I'm not that pathetic._

She was not.

Derek was still looking at her. Addison forced the glare off her face and turned to head towards the bedroom. "I'm taking a nap."

"It's almost six in the morning," he pointed out.

She gritted her teeth against the urge to turn back around and shout at the man.

"I know what time it is," she snapped acidly instead, then stalked off through the doorway and down the hall.

She knew she had to report to the hospital at eight. But also, she couldn't get herself to care right now.

 _Sleep_. Sleep would make it better. Then, she'd be fine.

 _Hopefully_.

* * *

When she woke up she still had a headache.

Coke would make it go away _(a fact she knew with frustrating certainty)_ and nicotine, while not entirely effective, still might ease the discomfort somewhat. Paracetamol probably wouldn't do much of anything but could be a good idea regardless, to take the edge off. Especially if ingested in conjunction with caffeine. But then, _no, no ,no_ , she was not falling into that particular trap again - drugs over drugs, swallow the cat to catch the mouse. Never leads to anything good.

Chemical abuse put her in this situation in the first place, she reminded herself, and adding more substances definitely wouldn't solve the issue. Actually the better option would be to simply force herself to suffer through the consequences - unpleasant, yes, and undeniably painful, of course ... but maybe if she just endured the discomfort this time it'll finally manage to stick in her brain and serve its purpose as a proper deterrent. It probably wouldn't. In fact, she knew full well that it wouldn't ... but maybe.

At the very least the decision helped her feel less like a pathetic addict. Because a proper junkie wouldn't willingly avoid drugs for the sake of teaching themselves a lesson, _now would they?_

Derek was still on the armchair when Addison gave up on going back to sleep _(head hurting too much, couldn't keep still)_ and instead wandered into the sitting room. The curtains were open, stabs of pain pulsed through her brain from the light outside, but she didn't move to close them. No, that would make it too obvious that she was not feeling well, and Derek might try to offer her some sort of pain reliever.

So, instead she winced away from the light as subtly as she could, edged into the kitchen; but then she realised she couldn't make coffee because that has caffeine, and getting a glass of juice or water sounded like too much work for too little payoff. She settled for simply standing and glaring at the tile pattern by the sink. _Not symmetrical_ , she thought. Abruptly, she found herself infuriated by the sight. _Honestly, how fucking hard was it to lay tiles in a symmetrical pattern? Who the hell built this place, and were they blind or just fucking stupid?_

"You feeling alright?" Derek asked from the sitting room. She glanced over with a scowl, then quickly turned back towards the sink as the reflection of sunlight off the mirror over the fireplace shot a bolt of agony through her skull.

"Fine," she bit out. Clenched her fists at her side, made a concerted effort to force the stormy glower off her face before she turned back around. _Calm down, relax_ ... she was perfectly alright, it was just a headache, nothing more. She could deal with this. She was fine.

"You look like you have a migraine or something." Derek had lowered the magazine now, regarding her with a concerned expression. She couldn't stop the acid glare that stole over her features.

Fucking Derek with his fucking concern - it was not like the man actually cared. No, he was just following his usual role of the perfect responsible 'doctor', diagnosing conditions, providing assistance; she'd do the same for any random stranger and the commonality strips the gesture of whatever meaning it might have held. Even more so when she knew full well he would rescind all sympathy within seconds if she were to tell him what was really going on.

That was how it always goes, after all - everyone would be full of comfort and support until they finally figure it out. Then, the platitudes would drop to steely disapproval, exasperated reprimands and trite, repetitive lectures as if she was a child caught red-handed with a bag of candies. It always came down to things like dangers and health risks and _don't you know you could die_ , pathetic warnings that lose all meaning because for fuck's sake she knew it already. She understood the repercussions far better than Derek or Savvy or Mark did, in fact, as she had actually been through them - was going through them.

They hadn't; she knew they hadn't. Mark might perhaps have some inkling thanks to cigarettes and alcohol, but _Derek? Savvy?_

Oh, God, never, not in a million years.

_Tell me, Derek, exactly how many times have you snorted? What was the worst thing you've ever been willing to do for half a gram of white powder? Do you have any idea what it was like to realise you are slowly killing yourself, only to find that you just don't care?_

No. Derek didn't have any concept. None of them do. And because of that they didn't seem to be able to comprehend that appealing to a sense of self-preservation didn't work when no such instinct existed.

And then, of course, they'd all just move on to attempting to convince her of her own illusory fortitude.

_How could you throw away your life? What were you thinking? Why would you do that to yourself? Don't you respect yourself enough?_

_You could die!_

She’d say, _I don’t care! I DON’T CARE!_

And no, she always felt like yelling, no, she fucking hadn't been. No one ever seemed to realise just how many cigarettes she smoked - how she hadn't gone a single day without at least a pack in months. But just because it was legal they somehow assume it was different.

It was not.

There was less of a rush and the high wasn't anywhere near as energetically euphoric but it was still a fucking stimulant, still affects the brain in exactly the same way as Coke did.

_So, why, why on fucking earth was she allowed to indulge in one chemical addiction without comment while the other would get her locked up in a clinic?_

Societal double-standards, fuelled by politics and fearmongering rather than actual facts.

Derek was still looking at her, raising his eyebrows in a questioning manner and Addison realised she'd been glaring wordlessly at the man for a good two minutes now. She broke the stare with a quick shake of her head _(Bad idea, bad idea, headache exacerbated by the movement)_ and stalks off toward the sofa.

"I don't have a migraine," she asserted irritably, then flopped down on the cushions and curled up with her back to him.

Returning to the bed would probably be the more sensible option if she wanted to avoid Derek asking questions ... but she had just remembered about the Coke hidden in the lining of the mattress, the marijuana tincture in the loose floorboard, cigarettes on the bedside table. _No. No no no,_ her room was a veritable sea of hidden drugs and no matter what she'd promised herself for the moment she knew her willpower wouldn't hold out if salvation was near enough at hand. Better to stay near Derek - he'd undoubtedly continue to pester her, but that was a fair tradeoff for the benefit of keeping on-track with this forced bout of sobriety.

Derek didn't try to interrogate her though. Mercifully, he just let the subject drop, went back to his magazine and read quietly while Addison laid on the couch and scowled at the cushions like they were somehow personally responsible for the hell she had trapped herself in.

"Someone's been calling you the past hour."

 _Dean_.

"Who is he?"

"Who?"

"The guy who's been calling you." he snapped.

"How am I supposed to know, Derek? Did I talk to him?" she snapped back exasperatedly.

"Addison, I was just asking a question."

"No." she said, pulling herself up on her elbows and glaring at him, ignoring the sudden rush and heaviness in her head, "You were implying something." Her fists clenched as she resolutely stared straight at her fiancé, nails biting into her palms. "If you have something to say, then just say it."

"Are you cheating?"

The question hit her like a tonne of bricks, even though she knew it was coming, and she scoffed, "No."

"Do I look stupid to you?" he suddenly yelled, which she wasn't prepared for and she recoiled, "Nobody goes out for a walk for that long! I asked your doorman, he said you left at around midnight! That's six hours unaccounted for. So tell me, where were you really?"

There was a tiny voice in the back of her mind that was telling her that it would be better for her to just be honest, but an even larger part of her was simply angry. Furious. She didn't want to fight with him, but this time, she really wasn't lying.

"I was out walking." she said once more in a flat tone of voice and then, added as she sat up straight, "By myself."

"Do you really think I am stupid enough to believe that?" His voice was cold in a way that she had never heard before.

She stared back at him in frustration. "Believe what you want but it's the truth. Maybe you're accusing me of cheating because really, you're the one who's actually doing it!" she said angrily.

"I'm not and I know you're lying, Addison. I know it."

"I'm not lying!" she got up, ready to storm off. She couldn't take it anymore.

"Where do you think you're going? We're not done!"

She didn't care what he believed. She just didn't want to be here with him anymore. She could go to her shift in her pyjamas, she didn't care.

She probably should stop at Savvy's first.

"Stay", he demanded, shaking with anger.

"No. You can't make me. If I want to go out, there's nothing you can do about it."

"Why are you doing this?" Derek asked.

"It's sad", she hissed and turned around sharply to leave. "That you would accuse me of cheating to make yourself feel less guilty. It's pathetic ... you're pathetic."

And that was it, the final straw. Derek grabbed her arm and yanked her back so forcefully that she landed on her ass on the floor. And it was the same old downward spiral again. Both of them stubborn and viscous and rough. She fought back, kicked him in the stomach and he too was kneeling on the ground. Addison pounced and pushed him backwards by the shoulders and every time he pulled himself back up, she'd shove him right back down. Again and again and again.

"Addison, stop. Stop."

She leapt forward, scratching and beating him roughly across the neck. Derek grunted in pain, knowing that he would probably sport a bruise. "Addison! Stop it! Stop!"

She was so good with her words, sharp knives that hurt Derek where nobody could see. Not even Derek, himself. She could make him believe anything. She twisted words and he let the wounds fester until he couldn't take it anymore and answered her with a rough grip, and a shake and he was right in her face. "DAMMIT ADDISON, DON'T MAKE ME DO SOMETHING I'LL REGRET!"

His eyes were wild, she noticed, as the full force of his anger washed over her. It wasn't that bad, she deserved it, she supposed. But she had done it, had gotten him to lash out at her, proved she could command his full attention. And yes, it scared her - knowing what could happen if he lost control of himself.

Shock and guilt quickly replaced the anger on Derek's face as the sight of Addison startled him back to composure. Her hair was still dishevelled from sleep. Dark circles under her eyes, not yet carefully covered over, bore witness to the same deep weariness Derek felt in himself. He quickly dropped his hold on her shoulder and turned away, shamed and horrified at becoming almost violent with the woman he loved.

She frowned quietly as Derek released her and started to turn away. "Derek?" she hid her face under her palms, unable to stop an uncharacteristic rush of tears. "Don't. Don't _you_ do this to _me_. Don't do this to _us_." she said and placed a hand on his chest.

God, she was so fucked. Derek could not know about Dean. It'd crush him to pieces. Or maybe it'd hurt her more. But she could fix this.

_Yeah, she could._

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for hitting you, Derek." she started.

Sometimes an apology was all they need.

He didn't move. She could feel his heart pounding fast and hard through the fabric of his T-shirt. He was warm, almost feverish. He let out a small sigh and she could feel how his chest rose under her fingers. His lips twitched again and finally his glance darted around a bit before he finally looked at her.

"I'm sorry but I'm so tired of being accused of doing something I didn't do. I tell you the truth and you don't believe me and it breaks my heart." she begged, leaning over him as she cried into the fabric of his shirt, "I am not cheating on you." she pleaded, "I'm not."

"Okay. I-I believe you, Addie," he stroked her hair gently. "I believe you. I just ... love you, Addison. So so much. But I-I feel like you're slipping away from me and I'm so scared because I don't know what to do."

She wiped away her tears and sat up slowly. "But I'm not. I'm right here, Derek."

Derek frowned. "No, no, you're not. You've been off for a while now. But I haven't said anything because I wanted to give you your space. The weed and you not showing up at the hospital, that's not you. I can't ignore it anymore."

"Darling," she gave him a weak half-smile. "Nothing's off. I guess ... You know that weed has always been a little off for me."

Derek nodded. He knew that. The last time they did weed together she spent the whole night vomiting. And the other time, she had gotten a little too panicky and paranoid. "But I feel like it's more than that. You've changed. It feels like you've been pushing me away. Do you even want to get married?"

He looked at her with such a sad glance that it hurt and sent ripples of pain through her.

"Yes. Yes. Yes." she kneeled on the ground, cradling his face in both hands. Her voice steady and sure and desperate all at once., "I'm telling you, Derek, I do. I want us to get married. And I'm not pushing you away. Never." she conceded, sighing as she leaned against his chest. "Believe me. I want us to get married."

Derek sighed heavily, pressing a gentle kiss to her forehead. "I want that too. I want to spend my life with you."

"Me too."

With an almost silent sob he lifted up his hand and gently caressed her face. The blue in his eyes seemed more intense than ever.

"I'm sorry …" he whispered and she could feel how he started to tremble. He slowly sat up and then buried his head in her chest, hugging her tight.

"I'm sorry." he cried out as she returned the embrace and wrapped her arms around him. She had never seen him like this, so exposed and so fragile. It made him even more beautiful somehow. She felt her own lips twitch as she tried holding back crying. His body was shaking as he sobbed lightly and she pressed him against her, smelling his skin, his hair and the scent of sweat and coffee and disinfectant.

"I was … I … I'm so scared of losing you …" he whispered and immediately looked back down, staring at the yellow throw blanket. "And then, when that guy called you ... I … I just …" he said and trailed off.

"I forgive you, Derek … It's okay. We don't have to talk about that anymore." she said, quickly wanting to change the subject and he looked up at her teary-eyed and nodded. She placed her hands under his jaw, lifting his head upwards slightly.

For a moment she was just drowning in those blue eyes, teasing the drawstring of his bottoms and made quick work of the knot.

"Addie," he objected, his hand closing over her wrist. "I-I don't think we should."

"It's fine." her hand slipped out of sight and Derek took tight hold of the edge of the couch once more.

Once they were able to catch their breath, Derek rolled to the side, pulling her with him so that their legs remained entwined. She rested her cheek against his chest — slightly damp with sweat. His hand found hers on his breastbone and he laced their fingers together.

She kissed his cheek, then the delicate skin just below his ear before she spoke again. "I love you."

She might be evil. She might be a bitch. She might be a skank and all the other derogatory terms. But that was the truth.

He felt so warm. His glance was telling her how incredibly bad he felt about this whole situation. He felt ashamed, she could tell, and that in turn made her feel ... relieved?

God, she was such a horrible person.

He kissed her gently, reverently, his fingertips trailing along her cheek as she clung to the feeling of being whole for however long it would last.

* * *

A quick shower and change of clothes later and she was back to looking less like a pathetic, washed-out junkie and more like a responsible member of society. It was all a ruse, though - she still felt like nothing so much as a shambling corpse, and her head couldn't stop pounding in what seemed like an eternity. But still, beyond the pain and discomfort was a vague sense of victory ... she had successfully diverted Derek's suspicions of her cheating. But why did she still not feel like a disgusting fraud? She'd fixed everything with Derek now. He was never going to be suspicious anymore.

 _Hopefully_.

She had managed to convince him of more bullshit. Like the person who'd been calling her was this first year resident who would not take 'no' for an answer.

It wasn't a lie, really. He was real. He existed. He really did kept bothering her with his advances. Only, she was telling Derek the truth _misleadingly_.

It was all just a pitiful sort of victory, _yes_ , from her 'sobriety' to her pathetic lies, but an accomplishment nonetheless.

Because what, honestly, was she hoping to achieve with all this? Proving she could do it? Why? Nobody will ever know, assuming she somehow managed to overcome temptation ... and besides which even if someone were to figure it out it was not like anyone would care.

 _What if she were to walk over to Dean's right now, stride into his apartment and announce that she'd been entirely sober for ten whole hours?_ Even in her head it sounded idiotic. Dean will raise an eyebrow, congratulating her with skepticism like he wasn't sure whether it was for her an accomplishment or not. _Congratulations? Welcome to the club? We're just the same?_ It wouldn't even register in his mind as a struggle worth validating ... because truthfully, it wasn't.

Ten hours. Not even half a day. And the majority of which was spent sleeping, and the rest sulking about the apartment and scowling at couch cushions and arguing with Derek, scratching him and making him cry and bleed. That was not an accomplishment, that was just stupid.

And it was not going to get any better. Not for a long time. The headache might ebb within a day or so but in its place will be weeks and weeks and weeks of exhaustion, moodiness, irritability ... she'll be even more of a hellish git than ever, and Derek will snap at her again, tell her to get over herself, to quit whingeing.

Then, after all of that, even if she succeeded ... what exactly will she gain from it? After all there was a fucking reason she'd climbed willingly into this self-made grave to begin with. Because her brain was a trainwreck screaming along through a firestorm of racing never-ending reams of thoughts and memories, and the only way to escape from the looming sense of imminent insanity was to freeze it all in place through chemical means. That wouldn't change just because she decided she needed to prove some asinine point about willpower to Dean.

Nothing ever really changed, she should damn well know that by now. But somehow she still always seemed to forget.

A pause as she stood in the doorway with her hands curled around the edges of the knob, as if it was the thing that was holding her up.

The second she stepped into his apartment she knew something was wrong.

She got out of the hospital a lot later than usually, mostly because it was going to be very very awkward between them at home. And really, she had nothing else better to do. Yet, as she started to shut the door she saw Dean lying on the couch, his belly down and multiple bottles of beers strewn between the couch and the coffee tables. At first Addison thought that Dean had passed out, that he was sleeping off whatever binge he went through, except as the door shut Dean popped his head up and peered over the armrest. His eyes were bleary and his cheeks were flushed. There were parts of Addison that wanted to sneer and make all her usual comments, yet there was also another bit of her that remembered that she was no saint.

"What happened?" she asked instead. "Alcohol poisoning?"

"Do you need something, Adrianne? Some weed, Coke? Maybe someone you can sink your talons into?" he sneered, sitting up straight.

"You're mad at me," Addison stated, dropped a hand on his shoulder, and Dean shrugged it off like she'd burned him.

She expected him to be as much.

He didn't ask why she was in his apartment. If he asked, she had no answer.

She perched herself on his lap and pressed her chest against his, and her eyes were staring at his. For the moment, he wrapped an arm around her waist and arched a brow. Addison slid her fingers through his and made a show of playing with them, up until he started to no longer feel rough at the edges. And no, he was still supposed to be anger. No. No. He shoved her off his lap and Addison just seemed to glide into the seat next to him.

"And what set you off, today?" she asked.

"Nothing," he replied. Addison just smiled at him.

"Oh, Honey, you said I have the nails of a predatory bird, now what made you so pouty?" she pressed and was on him again in moments, a knee between his thighs and their breath creating a whole new alcoholic drink as they stared into each other's eyes.

"Why are you even here, Adrianne?" he asked.

"Why did you let me in?" She shot back. His eyes fluttered to a close and he took a deep long breath.

"It was already open. I didn't let you in. A murderer could walk in and I wouldn't even care."

"So, you want me to leave," she said, turning him by the chin so he faced her, "is that it? I'll leave if you want me to."

"You didn't answer me," he stated harshly. He punched the cushion beside her, and for a brief second, Addison remembered how and why she kicked Dean out of her life previously.

"You didn't answer me." she said back.

Because the question of Coke being a problem for her didn't just come out of the blue. Dean liked to play his games and hated it when Addison played hers, which in all honesty was only fitting as Addison liked to play her games, but she could not stand Dean's. Still, there was something that always drew them back to one another but Addison couldn't put her finger on what exactly.

"You know I won't." he bared his teeth like some sort of animal that Addison had often enough told him he was. One of his hands hooked around the back of her neck and pulled. Their lips smashed together clumsily and there were too many teeth being involved as they tried to kiss. Addison pulled at Dean's hair. She pulled so hard that Dean had to tilt his head back and hiss in pain.

"I fucking hate you, Adrianne," he growled. Addison just smiled through her high and tugged harder, not enough to rip out the lovely hair, but enough that it forced Dean to show off his neck.

"Feeling is very mutual, Dean," Addison gave a purr and then latched her mouth to the tan skin of Dean's neck. She bit and nipped in a rough and careless measure. There was no need to impress Dean, no need at all. Dean grabbed her wrist hard and wrenched them behind her back. Addison arched back and glared .

"Have you come here to break it off for good?" he demanded. She raised a brow. "Why didn't you answer my calls? I called you all week."

"Because I didn't want to talk to you ... or see you."

Her answer hurt him, if his face was an indicator.

"Fuck you." he attempted to shove her off again but she wouldn't budge.

"You're too drunk to." she snorted, "Drunk or high or both?"

"And you're a giant mess, who's in denial so huge you tried to prove a point and lost and that's why you're here. You're too emotionally constipated to even be in a proper, faithful relationship." Dean threw out a barb.

"You're a raging alcoholic and cokehead who sees no issues with the fact that he's driven everyone but the emotionally constipated person away," Addison's retort was only mostly painful. She knew how to rile him up, what to say to make him hurt deeply. She knew how to leave the deepest cuts.

Family.

It was true in a way; he had no one but her.

Dean rolled so he could look at her.

"Shall we compare notes on how fucked up the other is? Maybe then we can find some common ground?" He snarled. Addison fell atop him, her entire body caging Dean in.

"You want to go there tonight, Dean?"

"Why not? I'm feeling so much more sober."

Her kiss was harsh, but it always was and it always sent a roll of absolute delight along his spine. Dean lifted his legs up and bracketed her narrow hips. One of his hands slid down along her spine and brushed along his ass.

Addison's body was what drew him to her at first. A nice one night stand, but then there was a mind behind that body and then it all became this.

A relationship that no one could ever understand.

Savvy always told her to just leave, that Dean shouldn't have any hold over her.

Dean seemed to have read her mind and laughed. But of course he hadn't and he removed his hands from her ass and instead wrapped his legs around her waist and pulled her down so she was flush against him.

"You're going to pass out," she growled between kisses. She rocked her hips against Dean, and there was no way Dean was keeping the moan from rolling out from his throat.

"Not when you move like that you fucking bitch." She pulled back just far enough that Dean could actually focus on her face if he wanted.

He didn't.

"Like this?" she asked and moved her hips in the exact way she had before. Dean tipped his head back, not only to allow the whining moan emittance from his mouth but also to not look at Adrianne. Fucking Adrianne. Dean squeezed his thighs hard around her, and he only received a grunt. Deep, low and only slightly pained, but afterwards she didn't move - her body was completely still. Dean wondered for a few moments what was going on and then Addison pulled away, untangling herself from Dean's grasp, and then he was left wondering if he'd gone too far.

"Leaving?" he asked, though he made sure he didn't sound as worried as he felt. Addison snorted and pulled at her clothes.

"Showering. You hate me smelling like hospital," she replied. Dean blinked; he actually didn't really notice what he called 'the smell of death' on Adrianne. It was something he filed away as she pressed him in against the bed, but the memory resurfaces and he gave a scowl.

"Yes, go do that. I might not be awake when you get back, though."

She just looked at him for a few moments, her hands on the waistband of her jeans. She looked like a pretty little picture that Dean wanted nothing more than to mark up.

"Is that a promise?" she challenged. Dean glared at her before shifting on his couch.

"You bet, it's a fucking promise." He rolled to his stomach and buried his hands beneath his cushions. He was ready to go on to continue to ignore Addison, when he felt a kiss at the back of his neck right behind his ear.

"Well then, I'll take an extra-long one so you can owe me in the morning." she punctuated her sentence with a smack against his ass. Dean gritted his teeth, he hated her, he really did, but at the same time he loved her very much.

Dean could feel himself slipping maybe he shouldn't have had the last five drinks.

"You'll pass out in your own vomit like that." she stated, "Come, I'll take you to bed. I can't have you die on me without making it up to me in the morning first."

He felt himself sway and the room move a bit more. His balance was absolute shit, but that was what Addison was for. But it was not like she could do much of anything if he were to collapse right here, right now.

"It'd be a good one in the morning. No half-assing."

"You're deadweight, Dean! Hold yourself up! I can't carry you all the way!" Addison commanded as she half dragged, half carried him across the room. "And so help me God if you pass out on this floor, there will be no morning rough, apology sex."

"You don't do apology sex."

"Fake apology sex before my shift."

"I am so grateful you penciled me in," he snarled.

"You should be."

She jostled him a bit more - how, when he was so much taller and all muscles? That might have been a turn on on a normal day but he was drunk and he didn't think his body could do much of anything other than sleep right now - but eventually he was able to move his legs towards the bedroom, and then proceeded to drop rather unceremoniously on the bed.

He grabbed her wrist before she could go and pressed a kiss to the pads of her fingers. "Don't leave, okay?"

"I won't. Not this time."

Dean was her escape.

When the world was just a little too much, when everything became just a little unbearable, when it all felt like it was two seconds away from crashing down, Dean was there. She curled into his arms after the shower, letting him whisper soothing nonsense to her, taking comfort in the quiet rumble of his voice. She liked the way her name sounded on his lips when he said Adrianne.

She drifted off after the shower, content to lay with Dean and his snoring.

She had given up. It was the first time she'd ever quit anything, the first time she didn't see something through. It was a confirmation that she was as screwed up as Dean was.

And maybe she unwittingly gave up on something or someone else because this was far more exciting.


End file.
